air and angels
by irnan
Summary: Oh, look, just - show me that holo, OK?" Luke said irritably. "Yes, that one of your Mom. And, see - this - this is my father." Leia, still suspicious of him, took one look at his holo and paled. "Dad!" she exclaimed.
1. Chapter 1

_this is a disclaimer._

**_AN: _**_Sequel to "wires, coming out", wherein Anakin finds Obi-Wan's body in the Chancellor's offices during Palpatine's duel with Mace Windu, and does not turn; takes place maybe six months before "wash it away down the kitchen sink". Title from John Donne.  
_

**air and angels**_  
_

The plan was dazzling in its simplicity, but that didn't mean it was going to be easy. Luke was beginning to have some private doubts about their ability to pull it off, and amazingly, Leia could tell he was.

Mom could never tell when he was nervous if he tried hard enough to hide it.

"Dad says the simplest plans are always the hardest ones to execute, but they pay off the best," Leia said firmly.

"I'm not..." Luke said helplessly. "I mean... I'm sure Dad's right, but..."

"You're afraid," Leia said accusingly. "After everything that's happened! After we _found_ each other, and, and got out of the school, and figured everything out, _now_ you're afraid?"

"I'm not afraid," Luke snapped. "It's just that switching places would be a lot easier if we were both boys!"

Leia narrowed her eyes at him. "Or girls," she said.

"Or girls," Luke agreed, pulling a face. Not that he'd ever want to be a girl! They were dumb, and they couldn't hit right, and they didn't like speeders.

Well... Mom wasn't dumb. She was a Senator. You had to be real smart to be a Senator. And Leia had hit _him_ the first time they met, and that one had hurt, because he'd bumped into her and made her spill her book bag, and that was how he'd seen the holo of Mom that she carried. And she liked speeders. She said Dad had taught her how to fly one.

But that wasn't the point!

"We'll get into a whole galaxy of trouble when it comes out," Luke tried again. "And it will come out. We don't look anything like twins. We've even got different eyes!"

His newfound sister sighed. "Dummy," she said fondly. "That's the point. What's the first thing Dad's going to do when he sees you? I'll tell you, because you don't know him. He's going to grab you and put you in a ship and bring you back to Mom and pick me up and..."

"It's not like in the book, you know," Luke said patiently. "We don't even know if they're divorced!"

Leia frowned at him. "If they still knew they loved each other they'd be together," she said. "And so would we."

Luke had no comeback to that one.

The twins were huddled together on a bench in a small park not far from the Theed spaceport. It had been four hours now since they'd escaped from their boarding school, crawling through a hole in the fence behind the greenhouses and racing each other through the streets of the city to get this far, laughing and flushed with success. But now that they'd stopped for snacks and hot chocolate, the triumph of getting away from Madam Dormé was beginning to wear off, and worries were taking its place.

At least they were in Luke's mind. He suspected his sister didn't know how to worry.

Of course, considering who their father was, that wasn't much of a surprise. A thrill went through him just thinking about it; his father, his wonderful brave handsome father, the laughing man in the holo he kept hidden away in his bag, was _Anakin Skywalker_.

The Hero With No Fear; the Last of the Jedi; the Leader of the Rebel Alliance. The only man who'd ever lived, they whispered, that the Emperor was afraid of. The greatest pilot, the most daring criminal in the Empire – in the whole universe!

Mom had told him Dad had been a pilot, an officer in the Clone Wars, and that he'd been shot down in the Battle of Coruscant, just a few months before Luke was born. Luke's holo showed a young man of maybe nineteen, not even ten years older than Luke himself was now, with short blond hair and a wide grin. It was a bit faded and blurred, so perhaps it was no wonder that Luke had never made the connection between that young man and the scarred, determined Rebel who defied the Emperor time and again.

Leia had, though. One glance at Luke's holo was all it had taken, and an instant later, they were brother and sister.

More than that – they were twins.

Luke drummed his cold fingers on the bench and looked at Leia. She was licking the grease off her fingers with every appearance of enjoyment, crumpling the paper that had held her sausages and rolls in her left fist. Luke had eaten his quickly and almost daintily, for which his sister had teased him mercilessly. But then, he had grown up in a Senator's house, not like where she had.

In secret Rebel bases, watched over by pilots and fighters and rescued Jedi, always a step behind Dad as he saved people from the Emperor. She got to see him every day, to know him, to laugh at his jokes and hear his voice.

He wasn't jealous really – after all, she hadn't had Mom, and Mom was the most wonderful person ever. She always had time for him, and she always had a funny story from the Senate and an interesting book for him to read, and she'd actually ordered Captain Typho to teach him mechanics and flying and how to shoot with a blaster.

But she wasn't Dad.

"You're, like, parsecs away," Leia said suddenly.

"I was thinking."

"Oooh. You do that a lot?"

"Don't be mean."

"I wasn't being mean! Dad and I are like that all the time." She paused a moment. "I bet he and Mom were too," she said wistfully.

Luke nodded. "There's only one way we'll ever find out," he said. "By bringing them back together."

"And demanding an explanation," Leia said fiercely.

"That too."

She knocked her knee against his and smiled; it wasn't quite the same smile Mom had (too fierce, too bright), but it was close.

He smiled back. "I have another plan," he said.

Leia looked disappointed. "But I liked the one we've got!"

Luke rolled his eyes. "It won't work," he said. "You know that! They'll know I'm not Leia Skywalker the minute I come near the RV point, and then there'll be trouble. Way before Dad can even _get_ there."

Leia looked grumpy, but she wasn't disagreeing.

"So let's make it easier on ourselves. Let's both go to Varykino."

"Together?" Leia said. "To Mom's house?"

"To _our_ house," Luke corrected. "Think about it. Dad would still have to come and get you. And you'd still have lots of time with Mom. And" – the final, most decisive volley – "we'd have more time together, too."

Leia bit her lip. Thought about it.

Then she looked over at him, and nodded.

Luke grinned.

*********

The trip to Varykino from Theed would take them maybe two hours. The twins chose a bench seat by the windows – they both had a fondness for looking out of windows while flying, they discovered – and pressed close to one another. Not many children travelled alone these days, even on Naboo.

But while Luke might be a Senator's son, Leia was the daughter of an outlaw and a Jedi, and even at eleven, she knew how to act invisible.

Luke dozed off fairly quickly. They'd snuck out of the school at dawn, long before the lights came on in the dorms, and he'd seen the landscape before, loads of times. Leia on the other hand was glued to the window, watching the meadows speed by, the hills grow closer, the mountains move around them and open on to more lakes, wide and blue as the sky above. It was beautiful here.

Dad had told her, when he'd brought her to the school, that Mom had come from Theed. She'd died when Leia was born, so the story had always gone, and she would have wanted Leia to love Naboo like she herself had.

Leia supposed it wasn't _quite_ a lie, but if he were here now, she could have quite happily punched her Dad in the face for telling her those stories about Mom, making her so sad for so long that Mom had died. After she'd first asked about her Mom, she'd felt like Mom's death was her own fault for being born, and Dad had held her for a very long time and promised that it had had nothing to do with Leia, and told her that she wasn't ever to feel guilty for Mom's death again.

Well, now she knew why not.

She started to sigh, but it quickly became a yawn instead, and Leia shifted into a more comfortable position, leaning her head against the window. If she could have dozed off like Luke, she would have, but something was using her stomach for a trampoline and making a funny taste in her mouth.

_Fear_, she thought. _I'm afraid. I don't think I've ever been afraid before. There's always been Dad..._

But for all she knew, Dad was the problem here, not the answer. What if Mom didn't love him anymore? Leia couldn't imagine anyone suddenly not loving her Dad anymore, but maybe that was what happened.

Maybe she'd somehow stopped loving both Dad and Leia.

The thought made her shiver. It wasn't fair that they'd done this to her and Luke! Luke was her twin. He balanced her out, made her feel whole and safe. In a way it was like being with Dad, only without the whole "I'm your parent and you have to do what I tell you" thing, and lots more fun, and she had never yet had to tell Luke how she felt about something – he just _knew_.

And then there was Mom herself – maybe she could take away the sadness in Dad's eyes, make him laugh properly, not just with his mouth. Maybe she'd know about stuff like manners, and boys, and growing up, and periods: all the things that didn't matter on a Rebel base, but did in the rest of the galaxy. Leia knew languages but not literature, mechanics but not math, decryption but not deportment.

Mom would know those things, right? She'd be soft and warm and gentle, always smiling, never busy planning an attack or disappearing in the night to go on an urgent supply run.

Leia's heart leapt into her throat as she caught sight of the shuttleport they were to land at; she woke Luke up with an elbow to the ribs just before the landing announcement. He glared at her, rubbing his side, but she didn't take any notice of it. She wound her fingers together and drew in a breath, trying to get calm like Dad had taught her.

Luke took her hands in his, and she jumped.

"It'll be all right," he said, and smiled.

Leia wished she had his optimism. He was a bit of a spoiled kid, in a way; she bet he'd never seen anyone die.

She bet he'd never sat by Mom's bedside and held her hand while the Generals whispered and the monitors beeped and Mom's face looked so pale and sunken, she might already have been dead.

But Dad hadn't been dead. He'd woken up, and everything had been all right.

Just like Luke said.

*********

To say that the house was beautiful was an understatement. Leia found herself rooted to the spot in the hall, bag hanging from her limp hand, mouth open. She'd been in lots of big, grand places, but ancient, abandoned fortresses had a different kind of grandeur to this house, with its marble floors and large open windows.

Luke had already disappeared into the maze of rooms ahead, dumping his bag in the hall like it didn't matter. Leia picked it up and gave it a shake to straighten it out and get the snow off, and then set it, neatly, against the wall, where her own soon joined it. She wondered if she should take her boots off, but Luke hadn't, so Leia settled for untying her scarf and pulling her coat off, laying it on top of her rucksack in as neat a pile as she could manage.

"Well, you're tidier than the other one," a voice said from somewhere behind her. Leia jumped so much she nearly fell over, and swung round.

The woman standing at the foot of the stairs laughed. "Oh, sweetheart, there's no need to look so terrified," she said cheerfully. "I'm Luke's Mom."

Leia tried to swallow and realised her throat was too dry. Mom was...

Mom was beautiful.

Not tall (now Leia knew where she got it from), very slender, in a long blue dress that fell to the floor, her dark hair pinned up in a loose knot – she had more curls than Leia, but their eyes were the same.

Leia worked desperately to get some moisture in her mouth. "I – I –"

"Mom!" Luke burst out of a room to Leia's right – she wasn't even sure it was the one he'd disappeared into – and skidded to a halt between Mom and Leia. "I didn't know you were here, I was trying to comm you –"

"Never mind me," Mom said sternly. "What are you doing here? Playing hookey like this? When Dormé called me and said that you'd disappeared I was frantic, I left the conference at Sollust immediately. I'm just glad I guessed right, and you came straight here!"

Luke looked abashed. "I hope it wasn't anything important..."

"I do!" Leia exclaimed, finally getting her voice back. All they'd done for weeks was talk about how unfair it was that Mom and Dad had kept them apart for so long, and now that Mom was here, he was backing down?

Mom blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"I do," Leia repeated, more loudly and firmly now, stepping up so she was level with Luke. If her voice shook, it was with anger. That was all. "I hope it was the most important thing you've ever done! It's not fair, all this time – you're such a liar, both of you, and you don't even know who I am!"

Luke was looking at her anxiously. He grabbed her hand and held on tight, but Leia was still looking at Mom, who'd gone very, very pale, eyes huge in her face. She sank to her knees until she was looking up at them, and whispered, "Leia?"

Leia nodded once. Luke freed his hand and gave her a shove, pushing her towards Mom, who stretched out both arms with a tiny little gasp, and Leia fell into them.

*********

"Oh, sweetheart, I can't believe it," Mom said, laughing a little. Her eyes were still wet, but she hadn't let go of Leia yet, holding her tight on her lap on the couch. Luke was lighting the fire, and he kept twisting round to look at them.

Leia's own tears had left a sizeable wet patch on the shoulder of her mother's gown.

"And both of you at that school!" Mom said, running a hand through Leia's hair and smiling at Luke. "So it wasn't terrible or anything?"

"Oh, no," Luke said. "No, Mom, it was great mostly... I mean, none of the other kids know how to fly a speeder or anything..."

"I don't know any history," Leia said.

Mom kissed her forehead. "History is easily fixed," she said gaily, and held out a hand to Luke. He pressed against her side, blue eyes bright as he grinned at his sister.

"Just one thing," Mom said.

Leia nodded.

Mom drew a breath. "Anakin," she said. "He's all right? Not... not hurt?"

Leia's eyes widened; Mom's voice had definitely shaken when she'd asked. "No," she said, "no, Dad's fine, I mean he's crazy, but he's Dad, it's pretty much what he does. He's fine."

Mom nodded and pressed a hand to her mouth to keep in another one of those little gasps. "Good," she whispered. "Thank whatever Gods..."

Luke and Leia exchanged a quick look; it was, they both agreed, the perfect opening.

"You don't hate him?" Leia said bluntly. "You didn't... send him away? Or anything?"

"Oh, Leia, no!" Mom said, squeezing Luke's hand. "You hear me, you two? I don't hate him – I've never hated him. The only person in the galaxy I love nearly as much as I love the two of you is Anakin."

"Then why'd you split us up?" Luke demanded. It was the first harsh word he'd spoken since arriving. "Why'd you lie to us?"

Mom sighed. "To protect you," she said. "To hide you."

Leia sat up. "From _him_," she said with loathing. "From the Emperor."

Mom nodded.

Leia hissed. "He destroys _everything_! I _hate_ the Empire!"

"Shh," Mom said, stroking a hand over her hair and kissing her cheek. "Enough for today, all right? Enough excitement. I want to know how you found each other – everything that's happened." She was smiling again, wide and bright.

Luke bit his lip. "What about Dad?" he asked in a small voice.

Mom grinned. "I'll call Ani tomorrow," she said. "Today, I want you two all to myself."

Leia started to giggle. "You call him _Ani_?" she said.

Mom sniffed. "Young lady, I am the only person in the galaxy who gets to call him that."

Leia laughed even harder; this time, Luke joined in.

*********

The rest of the day passed in a kind of haze for Leia: a haze made up completely of Mom, of her smile and her laugh and her perfume when she pressed Leia close. Even Luke had taken a backseat to Mom, for a little while at least.

Leia bet everyone in the galaxy did.

Mom called Madam Dormé first and reassured her that the twins were both safe, and then she installed them on tall stools in the kitchen and made them lunch, a piping hot stew made of all sorts of different ingredients that got tossed in the pot and made a lumpy, delicious meal for two cold, tired and emotionally drained children.

"It's the only thing she knows how to cook," Luke confided to his sister.

"Silence in the cheap seats," Mom ordered. "What if she decides she doesn't want a Mom who can't cook?"

Leia laughed. "I'll manage," she said. "_Dad_ can cook."

Mom grinned. "One of the reasons I married him."

Luke poked thoughtfully at his stew. "But then," he said, "you're not Padmé Amidala Naberrie at all. You're Padmé Amidala Naberrie Skywalker."

"And you're Luke Skywalker, genius," Leia said.

"Luke Anakin," Mom said. "And Leia is Leia Amidala. Theoretically."

"If it weren't for the Emperor," Leia said fiercely.

It was the only time they touched on any truly serious subjects for the rest of the day. Mom wanted to hear every detail of how Luke and Leia had met: Dad's split-second decision to send her to school after the base was attacked, and how he had checked her into the school as Leia Lars, a week after term started, so of course she'd been the weird new kid right from the start. How Luke had seen Leia's holo of Mom – how they hadn't even liked each other until they'd ended up in detention together for fighting. How he had snuck into her dorm room one night with the holo of Dad clenched in his fist...

"You should have heard me, I was furious," Leia said cheerfully. "Dad and I have never fought so bad as when he told me he was shipping me off to some strange planet!"

"Looks like it turned out for the best," Mom said, laughing. "Luke's been enrolled there for a year now... and Dormé wouldn't have recognised the name of Anakin's stepbrother."

"You'll be happy to see him, won't you?" Leia said softly. "When he comes to get me?"

Mom smiled. "Overjoyed," she said, equally soft. "Look here." She stood up and left the room briefly; they could hear her unlocking a drawer in her study before she came back out with a holo. She held it out to the twins.

It was of Leia, age maybe six or seven, perched on a packing crate in the hangar of an old base, reading intently, her short legs dangling over the ground.

"I've seen Ani once since you were born," she said. "D'you remember the raids in the Hoth system, years ago? I was sent to investigate with some other Senators, and Anakin found out somehow. Instead of taking off and getting the hell out of there like he should have, he stayed. To see me. We had about half an hour to talk, and he had this holo of you, Leia, and gave it to me."

"Does... did you give him one of me?" Luke asked.

Mom shook her head. "I had it in my luggage," she said. "It hadn't been brought up to my room yet. He would have been found if he'd waited for it – I had to make him leave. I wouldn't be surprised if he's never quite forgiven me for that!"

Luke smiled, rather weakly, and tried to hide his disappointment. So Dad didn't even know what he looked like...

Leia caught his hand and squeezed briefly before dropping it again. He knew what she meant: soon, Dad wouldn't just know what he looked like. He'd know Luke.

"You know, it's getting late," Mom said. "I think you two should jump in the fresher and head off to bed."

"It's not late at all," Leia objected. "Dad..."

Her voice trailed away when she caught the look on her mother's face. "Um. Not that he lets me stay up late or anything."

Mom laughed at her. "I suppose suggesting separate rooms would be an exercise in futility," she said.

"We've only just found each other," Luke said sternly.

"Of course," Mom agreed.

*********

The twins had taken turns in the fresher while Mom made up the bed in Luke's room. It was easily large enough for two, and neither Luke nor Leia were very big for their age.

Mom had tucked them in and kissed them both good night as if they were six and not eleven, but no one had objected.

Once her footsteps had disappeared down the stairs, Luke reached out and twined his fingers through his sister's.

"Well?"

"Your plan was better than mine," Leia said sleepily.

He grinned at the darkened ceiling.

"And Mom?"

"She's _wonderful_."

"Yup."

After a moment, Leia said, "And Dad's awesome. You'll see."

"I can't wait," Luke said quietly.

"You know," Leia said thoughtfully, "I suppose we're the Skywalker twins now. Instead of me being the Skywalker girl, like before."

_The Skywalker twins._

"It sounds pretty good," Luke said.

Leia didn't answer. She'd already drifted off.

*********

Alone in her study, Padmé sat at her desk, head propped in her hands, and tried, without much success, to calm down and get her thoughts in order. She'd left Threepio at Sollust with the rest of her staff when Dormé's call about Luke had come that morning, and was currently regretting it, for the silence in the darkened house seemed to seethe and teem with her worries and fears. The conference, the plans, the effort she'd had to put into keeping her conversation with Grand Moff Tarkin civil yesterday... then the sheer panic of thinking Luke had run off... and then finding Leia with him when she'd arrived!

Leia. _Gods_, her daughter was here... that tiny baby she'd last held at Polis Massa... Not even the holo Anakin had given her had been enough to dispel the image of the gurgling baby who'd wrapped a hand around Padmé's fingertip and stared up at her crying mother with huge eyes from her father's arms.

Anakin... did he know Leia was missing yet? She had to call him, at once, and let him know she was safe. Her hands shook as she typed the encryption key in preparation for the call.

No contact except in the direst of emergencies. It was what they'd promised themselves in a desperate attempt to protect the twins from Palpatine, and only once had they broken it: in the Hoth system, five years ago. It had been Padmé who'd found the holo of their daughter in Anakin's jacket pocket. He'd taken it from her and wordlessly slipped it into the pocket of her own overcoat before kissing her goodbye, her shaking hands fisted in his jacket, both of their faces wet with tears.

Finally, the comm unit beeped, pulling Padmé out of her memories.

_Transmission accepted. Commcall open._

The holo blinked to life. Anakin was standing in front of a table somewhere, probably in some conference room. There were dark circles under his eyes and a tired tilt to his mouth, but oh, the way his face lit up when he saw her.

Only briefly, until he remembered their promise.

"Padmé," he said. "Angel, what's happened?"

Business before family, she told herself. "I have the plans," Padmé said. "For the facility in the Maw." She held up the disk so he could see it, and watched as he leaned forward eagerly, eyes bright.

"You did it."

"I did." She smiled at him. For a moment, he looked delighted, triumphant, proud and strong.

Then Anakin's eyes refocused on her, narrowing. "You couldn't have just sent them on this channel?"

Ah, it had been a long time since Padmé felt like teasing anyone but Luke.

"Actually," she said, and put in a melodramatic pause there, "I think it would be best, and safest of course, if I were to deliver the plans to a trusted member of the Alliance in person."

"Angel, what are you playing at?" Anakin said suspiciously.

All this time apart, and the endearment came as easily to his lips as it ever had.

"I'm saying you need to come home, Ani," Padmé said. She drew a breath and hoped she didn't start crying like an idiot again. Best to just say it. "Anakin, Leia's here."

"What!"

Oh, so much for not crying. "She and Luke... we put them in the same school, Anakin!"

"What!" Anakin said again, looking stunned. "I didn't... Luke was at that school? Force, I was so close to him – I didn't even realise..."

"I know," Padmé said. "I know, love. But you need to get here, and see your children."

Anakin was having trouble wiping the astonished look off his face. "Yes, I do," he muttered, and then glanced up sharply, looking to one side of the transmitter. He gave a quick nod, presumably at someone who'd come looking for him, and then turned back to her, all business again.

He'd changed so much: fiercer, harder, more focussed. It thrilled her.

"Padmé, I have to go. Listen, I can be on Naboo in... let's say fourteen hours? That's lunchtime with you, yes? I love you, Angel."

The things that smile of his did to her remained exactly the same.

"I'll see you soon," Padmé said, and smiled back as he cut the connection.

*********

The next morning, the sun came out, flooding the house with light and making it almost painful to look out of the windows at the snowy meadows, the light was so bright.

Padmé decided it was a sign.

She woke the twins up, sitting on the side of their shared bed and stroking Leia's messy hair until her eyes opened.

"Mom," Leia said delightedly, and crawled into her lap.

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen."

"There's only two of us, Mom," Luke grumbled, sitting up. He was about as fond of early mornings as his father, which was to say, not at all.

Anakin. Anakin was on his way here, coming closer to her with every second. The thought made Padmé want to jump for joy; but it also terrified her.

They had kept Luke and Leia apart for so long in order to keep them hidden from Palpatine. What if the Emperor somehow became aware of their reunion? Padmé had worked long and hard to convince the man that she and Anakin had severed all ties when he had turned against the Empire, proving herself loyal – not devoted, but just loyal enough that Palpatine would never have cause to believe Anakin Skywalker's child might prove dangerous to him. It hadn't been easy, but the act had served both Padmé and the Alliance well.

She sensed it was an act that was coming to an end.

"Mom?" Luke asked. He could always tell when she was troubled.

Padmé drew a breath. "I have news for you," she said, and held Leia closer for an instant.

"What news?"

"What is it?"

"Anakin is on his way here as we speak."

Leia whooped. "Dad's coming!"

Luke's eyes widened. "Dad's coming," he repeated, more quietly, and turned to gaze out of the window as if Anakin's fighter would be landing in the gardens at any minute.

Padmé knew exactly how he felt.

Leia was practically bouncing up and down with excitement. "It'll be awesome," she said, wrapping her arms around herself and grinning up at her Mom. "Won't it, Mom? You tell him. Everything's gonna be OK now that Dad's coming."

Padmé laughed, stroking her messy hair. She found it almost impossible not to touch her long-lost daughter, to constantly reassure herself that Leia was here with her, solid and warm and alive. "So what you're saying is, I'm not enough for you?"

"The more the merrier," Leia said solemnly, but the effect was ruined when she broke out into giggles.

Luke narrowed his eyes at her in a way that reminded his mother of Anakin at his mischievous best before hitting his twin with a pillow. Leia shrieked and wasted no time in retaliating.

Padmé barely got out of the room alive.

**********

It turned out that Mom wasn't so bad at cooking breakfast, either. Leia tried to help, but was turned down and gently shooed out of the way. She thought Mom was trying to distract herself from waiting for Dad, because Mom's head would give this little jerk every time she glanced at the windows, and her mouth would tighten like she was trying not to be excited.

The trouble was, Luke was sitting in front of the fireplace with his legs crossed under him, frowning out of the big windows like staring at the mountains was going to magically teleport Dad's starfighter here. Mom wanted to be distracted from waiting, and Luke plainly didn't.

Good times all round.

Leia sighed, kicked at the corner of the couch with one boot for a minute, and then went out onto the balcony, stamping her footprints into the snow. If Mom wouldn't let her help and Luke was being too dull to play with her, then exploring was obviously the only way to ignore the anticipation knotting her insides. Did they think she was being all complacent and stuff about Dad coming?

On the other hand, at least she'd seen Dad not so long ago. Luke had never seen him at all, and Mom had seen him only _once_ since Leia and Luke had been born.

"What's the point of being married if you're apart for eleven whole years?" Leia asked the trellis archway on the balcony irritably.

It didn't answer.

She sighed again, putting a bit more melodrama into it, and wandered off to the stone railing overlooking the lake. It was a bit taller than she was, but she managed to brush the snow off, climb up and straddle it just the same, one foot swinging over the water, the other resting on the balustrade. The stone was freezing, and the cold wind nipped at her skin through her clothes, but it was lovely out here just the same, the sunshine dazzling, a mist lying over the far side of the lake. There was an island not far out; Leia bet she could swim to it.

In summer, preferably.

Where would Dad's starfighter land? Out there, in the gardens – the space between flowerbeds was just big enough. Leia wondered if he had used to land it there before she and Luke were born, back during the Clone Wars when Dad and Mom were still married properly.

Far away over the other side of the lake, something glittered in the sun, moving steadily towards their house. Leia frowned at it, and then shivered. It was still too far away for her to see what it was, but she knew instantly that it wasn't Dad.

Whatever type of ship it was, she didn't like it, and she didn't like the people who were on it, and she _never_ wanted it to get here.

"Leia? Leia, sweetheart, you'll catch your death. Come on in."

Leia jumped; she'd been concentrating so hard on the ship that it was a shock when Mom put her hand on her shoulder.

"And your pants will get soaked," Mom added, smiling a little.

Distantly a part of Leia winced; she hadn't thought of that. But there were more important things than wet pants right now.

"Mom," she said. "Someone's coming to see us. And it's not Dad."

Padmé leaned over the balustrade, peering intently across the lake. She inhaled sharply, and then looked down at her daughter.

"Can you tell what they want?"

It didn't occur to Leia to ask how her mother knew that she could sense things like that.

"Nothing good," Leia whispered. _Dad, Dad, please get here soon..._

Padmé glanced back at the craft and nodded. "Leia, get inside. Get Luke, tell him to grab your things and hide in the attic, understand?"

"It's the Imps," Leia said fiercely. "Isn't it?"

"Go, Leia!" Mom ordered. The snap in her voice was the same one Dad got before an attack.

Leia jumped off the balustrade and ran inside. Luke looked surprised when she grabbed him and hauled at his elbow, but Leia just barked "Attic!" at him, and that forestalled any protest. She wondered briefly how and when Mom had impressed the importance of the attic hideaway on him as they ran, slip-sliding on the marble in socked feet and wet boots respectively.

Surprise had become worry and uncertainty by the time they got upstairs, and to be honest Leia was kind of afraid as well, but she pushed it down ruthlessly.

_The trick is not to mind that you're scared_, Dad whispered to her. Breathe. In, out. In, out. Along the corridor, through the bedroom door, grab your stuff together so they don't know you were here. In, out.

The trapdoor in the ceiling of Luke's – of their – bedroom was cleverly hidden. Luke opened it by keying a code into a remote he'd taken from behind the closet, and climbed up first with the bags.

"There's flashlights and ration bars and stuff up here," he said. "We won't need anything..."

Leia, balanced on the steps set into the trapdoor, looked out of the windows. The shuttlecraft was closer now: it was definitely the Imps. There were maybe fifteen soldiers crammed onto that thing, and an officer in his dark uniform. Even at this distance, the sight of him made her skin crawl.

"Leia, up the steps now!"

Mom had followed them upstairs. Leia scrambled up the steps and knelt next to Luke as Mom came to stand under them. She put one hand on the trapdoor and held out a datadisk to Luke, who took it with shaking hands.

"Mom, what's –"

"Give that to Anakin," Mom said. "Tell him I'll kill him myself if he leaves you two alone to try and come after me. Tell him I love him very much. Not as much as I love the two of you, though."

"Mom –" Leia said. Her voice shook, but if Mom wasn't crying, then neither would she.

"Keep that disk safe," Mom said firmly, eyes travelling from Leia to Luke and back again, as if memorising every line of their faces. Her look alone felt like goodbye. "Keep yourselves safe."

Downstairs, the front door crashed open.

"Senator Amidala!"

"Watch your fingers," Mom said, and swung the trapdoor up. The twins scrambled backwards, watching the light disappear and Mom with it. Luke handed Leia the datadisk and put the locking code into the remote with trembling fingers, feeling his way over the keypad. Now that the trapdoor was closed, it was pitch dark up here. Leia heard Luke feeling along a shelf; then he snapped a flashlight on. There was the sound of footsteps on the stairs, coming along the corridor, loud and steady; they heard Mom leave their bedroom.

"Governor Tarkin. How thoughtful of you to invade my home yourself, rather than leaving it all up to your lackeys."

"Senator Amidala," Tarkin replied. His very voice made Leia wrap her arms around herself and edge closer to her twin. He sounded cold, cold and dead, with a terrible undercurrent of snakelike malice. "You are under arrest, milady, on the charges of stealing military secrets, plotting treason, and, as I understand it... _harbouring_... that fugitive and terrorist Anakin Skywalker." There was a pause, and then: "I'll say this for the man, he has impeccable taste."

There was the sound of an open-handed slap. Leia hoped it left a mark on Tarkin's face _forever_.

Tarkin chuckled. "I do hope you enjoyed yourself in his bed, milady. One last pleasant memory before you face the needle? Now tell me. Where are the plans?"

"Governor Tarkin, I promise you, the only plans I know anything about are my travel plans, back to Sollust this evening."

"Of course you do," Tarkin said flatly. "Search the house! Tear the place apart! And if you find any sign of her little brat, bring him straight to me."

He must have turned away then, gone back downstairs, because the next time someone spoke, it was Mom again, biting sarcasm in her voice: "Don't worry, Commander, I'll come quietly."

They must have been holding a blaster on her. Faintly the twins could hear footsteps going down the stairs, but the sound was drowned out by the noise the stormtroopers were making as they searched the house. Doors were flung open, the contents of drawers and cupboards were spilled across the floor. Every now and then glass shattered. Occasionally there was a murmur of voices, but other than that the stormtroopers mostly worked in silence. Leia was straining her ears to try and catch any sound of Mom, or that sithspawn Tarkin, whoever he was.

Luke was staring at the trapdoor in silence. He had a look on his face that Leia had seen before, although not on her mild-mannered, quietly enthusiastic brother.

In the dimness of their attic hideaway, Luke had never looked so much like Dad.

*********

At least Tarkin hadn't cuffed her, Padmé thought distantly. Her 'escort' had come to a halt in front of her study. Tarkin was standing just inside the door, dividing up his glances between her and the troopers searching through her things.

If he thought she was going to give anything away by her reactions to what his men were doing, he was a fool. She'd even cleared the kitchen to hide the evidence that she had been preparing food for more than one person.

A surprisingly well-informed fool, though. Padmé wasn't sure if she was more worried that Tarkin had so quickly discovered she had been delivered the plans for the battle station, or that he seemed to think he knew a thing or two about her relationship with Anakin. True, there had long been rumours about Luke's paternity, especially after the Purges and Anakin's very public denouncement of Palpatine, but with every vote Padmé used to prove herself a loyal follower of the Emperor, those rumours had become quieter and quieter.

She still shouldn't have slapped him.

Had Tarkin just been raking up those old stories, or did he actually know something? The only person on her current staff who knew not only that Anakin was Luke's father but also that Padmé herself had been working for the Alliance practically before it started was Sabé, and the idea of her bodyguard and friend betraying her – willingly or not – sickened Padmé's stomach.

Suddenly she had to bite down the hysterical urge to giggle, thinking of Tarkin's remark – she should have thanked him politely for his interest and said that yes, Governor, she'd enjoyed every second she'd ever spent in her husband's bed (well, their first time had been a bit awkward all round, neither of them having been particularly experienced at that point, but even lying there and laughing with him about it was a precious, treasured memory). Padmé distracted herself imagining Tarkin's reaction to that for a few moments.

Upstairs, someone dropped something heavy, and the crash reverberated through the whole house. Padmé tried to hide her flinch, and tried even harder not to think of the twins.

They were all right. They would be all right. They were strong and steady and brave and well-taught. Anakin was on his way. They would be just fine.

Tarkin looked sour when he exited the study. Did he really believe she was that careless?

"Congratulations, Governor," Padmé said icily. "You certainly know how to waste the Empire's time on petty grudges."

Tarkin's backhanded blow to her face sent her staggering, almost falling against one of the troopers. Her jaw ached already and her eyes watered with the shock and pain.

"Take her back to the ship," he ordered. "When we are done here, I will interrogate her myself."

Padmé worked her jaw – rapidly swelling up as he spoke – from side to side and gave him her sweetest smile as one of the troopers grasped her right elbow in preparation of dragging her out.

"I'm honoured, Governor," she said. "But you'd save yourself no end of time and trouble if you went straight for the needle."

Tarkin drew himself up. "I still might, milady," he said. She wondered if he knew how frightening that calm rationality of his was, or whether he was like that because he didn't actually have any emotions in the first place. "However, I have been instructed to keep you alive for a little longer, if I can." He gave her a thin, mirthless smile. "Just long enough."

_Just long enough for Anakin to try and rescue me_, Padmé realised, feeling sick. This was what they had wanted all along, as soon as they'd realised she had stolen the plans. It didn't even matter that she no longer had them, for who would dare plan an attack on an Imperial shipyard once Anakin Skywalker himself had been caught, tried – if that! – and (very publicly and gruesomely) executed? Nothing would demonstrate the Empire's might more clearly than the death of their most dangerous enemy. _Oh, Ani. Stay away, love. Take our children and run! Please. Stay away._

She knew he wouldn't. Everything in him – everything that made him who he was – would balk at the mere suggestion of leaving her to die, even if they weren't married. Even if he didn't love her.

The trouble was, the Emperor knew that as well as Padmé did.


	2. Chapter 2

_this is a disclaimer._

**air and angels, chapter two**_  
_

Force, it had taken _forever_ to convince his damn Generals that yes, he did have to go to Naboo himself, and no, there was no way this was a trap, and no, he wasn't prepared to send anyone else to meet with Senator Amidala. In the end, Anakin's patience had snapped (as it generally did), and he'd informed the lot of them that he was damn well going to Naboo because Senator Amidala was his wife and her son Luke was Leia's twin, Leia who was incidentally _also_ on Naboo, and owing to the distinct possibility that their cover had been blown, he wanted his family away from Naboo and Coruscant and anywhere else in the galaxy where there was an Imperial presence and here with him on base from now on, thank you very much and amen.

The collected command staff of the Alliance had been too stunned to raise any further objections, so Anakin had escaped from the briefing room and gone to ready his fighter.

"I'm not happy you never told me, Sky Guy," Ahsoka said. She'd come to see him off.

"Yeah, yeah," Anakin said easily. "You're telling me you never guessed?"

"There is," Ahsoka said haughtily, "a big difference between _guessing_ the deepest and most sacred secret of your former Master and ersatz older brother and being _told_ it, Sky Guy."

Two 'Sky Guy's in ten minutes. He was really in trouble now.

Anakin leaned in and kissed her cheek; she stared at him in surprise. "I'm sorry, Snips," he said. "I should have told you." And then, with a wicked grin, "But think! A new nephew!"

"Go away before I hit you with my lightsabre," Ahsoka said, pretending she wasn't pouting.

Anakin laughed out loud, and Ahsoka shook her head at him. "You know, you don't often do that if Leia's not around."

"No," Anakin said, and took a moment to savour the anticipation curling in his gut. _Soon_. _Soon_. "No, I guess not."

And now it was six hours later and he was thirty standard minutes away from his wife and children and Anakin Skywalker was shifting restlessly in his seat like any fool kid with self-control problems (well, he'd always had self-control problems) and not a lot of patience (as previously mentioned, he'd never had any of that, either).

"Artoo..."

Anakin didn't have to read the screen to know that his astromech was telling him in no uncertain terms that no, there was no more speed to be got out of her, and yes, they would be in Nubian space within ten minutes. He grinned briefly, but it quickly turned into a grimace. Thirty standard minutes! He could wait that long. Thirty minutes were nothing compared to eleven years.

Right?

Anakin let his head fall back against the seat and groaned. _Patience, Anakin, patience! You're a Jedi, remember?_

Not even picturing one of Obi-Wan's lectures on the subject was helping. Three months since he'd seen Leia, let alone Luke and Padmé – and Luke himself had probably been no more than a few hundred yards away from him when he'd said goodbye to Leia!

It was too much of a coincidence to _be_ a coincidence, Anakin was certain of that. The Force had decided it was time for the Skywalker family to reunite, and so they had.

Anakin just wished it would stop messing around with his life like that, without so much as a rudimentary consideration for his children's safety. His decision to send Leia away had been made after the attack on their base at Roodun; they had made the move to an abandoned Separatist skystation not long after that, but everyone knew it was time once more to look for something a little more fortifiable, and hopefully more permanent. The Imps had upped the bounty on his head again, and the patrols in many outlying systems were slowly becoming both more frequent and more trigger-happy.

It couldn't be plainer that Palpatine was getting impatient with Anakin's continued successes: three attacks on Imperial cargo ships in the last month alone, and the death of one of Tarkin's favourite underlings during the fighting. If the attacks continued to escalate, they would soon be fighting an all-out war, and the prospect terrified Palpatine. Anakin could feel the Sith Lord's anger and growing fear in the Force like a black smoke drifting this way and that, overshadowing the galaxy in a desperate attempt to find and destroy him. The Emperor had had nothing but contempt for Anakin during the Clone Wars – contempt and a twisted sort of desire for him, a need to twist and warp Anakin into something he could use and command. But now...

Now Palpatine was beginning to wonder if he should have worried more about that old Prophecy of the Jedi than he had.

The thought made Anakin smile with grim satisfaction. _Go on, your Highness. Quake in your boots. I will destroy you – if not for the galaxy, or for myself, then for my family. For my children._

His children. Luke. What would Luke be like? Padmé had told him that Luke had his eyes, and his propensity for adventure and getting into trouble, but Anakin was sure, without knowing how he was sure, that Luke resembled his mother in many more ways. Neither of them were the type to judge others. And Luke might be impulsive, but he never promised what he couldn't keep.

Would he even want to know Anakin, or would he resent him for leaving and taking Leia with him?

It was a train of thought that sent a chill down Anakin's spine. Luckily, they dropped out of hyperspace not a minute later, and the Nubian space authorities were distracting enough to shake him out of his half-formed fears.

*********

The snow, Anakin thought sourly as the fighter sped towards Varykino, he had not been counting on. He'd completely forgotten about season changes on Naboo, planning on landing in their meadow by the waterfalls in order to arrive quietly and without fanfare at Varykino on foot.

It was going to be an unpleasant walk. At least there was more of the stuff predicted for the evening; that way, his footprints would be hidden.

Of course, he might find himself digging his fighter out of a snowdrift when the time came to leave, too. Never mind, the twins would help.

Anakin grinned at the thought.

Artoo, however, saw nothing to be cheerful about in that scenario.

"I'm sorry, buddy," Anakin said. "But snow or no snow, you can't make it down that cliff – yeah, it's my fault. I should have put more thought into this."

Artoo informed him that he couldn't have put it better, and that Anakin never changed.

He grinned. "I know. But look, the view will be spectacular!"

When Artoo's reply came, Anakin sent a silent prayer of thanks to his wife's Gods – all of them – that Leia had never quite figured out the intricacies of the little droid's binary language.

The snow was calf-deep, heavy, wet and clingy (just the right kind for making snowballs, Leia had once informed him right before her masterpiece hit him in the face), and the wind was biting up here in the open. Looking at the waterfalls in the sunlight was like nothing Anakin had ever seen before, a burst of light and joy and happiness in an otherwise mostly barren landscape, and he stood there and watched it for several minutes, breath steaming, squinting against the dazzle.

Tomorrow, when he stood up here again, he'd be with his wife and children.

Apparently, not even the prospect of a night in the cold could make Artoo spoil his master's happiness; when Anakin farewelled him, he just wished him luck.

In summer time, it would have taken Anakin just under an hour to get to Varykino at a leisurely walk (what? Those were the only kind he'd ever taken up here). The house was a long way off, and the path was sometimes steep and slippery, and Force that wind was cold. Anakin wanted to run, to bolt headlong down the mountainside like that boy who'd ridden a shaak and kissed his beloved on the lakeside balcony for the first time, marvelling at her smooth warm skin against his knuckles. He didn't know how he stopped himself, unless it was imagining the look on her face if he showed up with a broken bone or two.

Not the first impression he wanted to make on Luke, either.

His son... were he and Leia friends already? Had they easily accepted their connection, sensing the bond between them through the Force, or was Luke balking at the idea of having a criminal and a terrorist for a father? Anakin wouldn't blame him if he did. Did he show as much affinity for the Force as Leia? How had they found out they were twins? Or had they just made friends without ever realising it, and Padmé had later recognised her daughter?

Varykino finally came into view as the pathway made a sharp turn under Anakin's feet. Tall and graceful as ever, the place hadn't changed. Padmé's personal shuttle was sitting on the landing pad in the back courtyard that was cut into the hillside diagonally below his current position. Anakin frowned; she rarely used her Senator's privilege of ignoring the Naboo no-fly zone up here. He picked up his pace a little. The path wound its way through a copse of trees, and the snow was less deep up here.

Hadn't he climbed that one once, that first glorious afternoon? And she'd come after him, laughing, her skirts snagging in the branches. The things he'd done to impress her... she'd neither wanted nor needed any of it. Good and bad, she loved him anyway.

Maybe ten minutes away from the house now, and there was a ship moving away from the veranda, a shuttle of some kind – Imperial markings –

Anakin's breath caught in his throat as he watched it pull away and begin to rise, preparing to leave the atmosphere. He ducked behind a tree as it came closer to his eye level, gripping his lightsabre with desperate strength.

Padmé was on that ship.

He did have some self-control left after all, he found, despite his first instinct to scream and yell and reach out with the Force in fury to disable the damn thing and kill everyone on board except for his wife.

But that was too close, far too close, to the Dark Side, to the kind of uninhibited anger that Palpatine had spent so long trying to coax out of him. What good would it do to save her from the Imps if he became no better than one of the Emperor's Dark Side Adepts in the process?

Besides, Leia wasn't with her. Anakin was sure of that. That meant there was a chance Luke wasn't, either. That she'd been able to hide them.

The twins came first. Always.

He waited until the shuttle had disappeared from view behind the mountains, hoping against hope that they never were never in a position to spot his fighter and Artoo in the meadow. Only when he was sure they were gone did he start to hurry, slip-sliding through the snow, all caution set aside for now – he had to trust in his instincts, in the Force, in the sure-footedness of a boy who could climb a sand-dune quicker than anyone else in the Row.

The scum had left the heavy double doors of Varykino hanging open. The house had been ransacked, top to bottom, furniture overturned, contents of drawers tipped out onto the floor. The heavy glass dining table was in shards. Two windows in the living room where Anakin had first told Padmé he loved her were broken, the couch they'd so often made love on in shreds, the fireplace choked with the debris of the search. Even the kitchen had been wrecked, her ridiculously expensive caf machine a heap of twisted metal, her favourite mugs smashed. Her study had been reduced to a pile of rubble.

Anakin stumbled up the stairs to the bedrooms, numb with cold and fear. He could barely concentrate enough to sense his daughter in the Force, so he did it the old-fashioned way, shouting her name and Luke's as he made his way through one destroyed room after another.

Torn paintings, curtains hanging off their broken poles, Padmé's wardrobe spread in tatters over the floor. Anakin realised the crunching noise under his boots was the remains of one of her older, more elaborate headdresses.

"Leia! Luke!"

Still no answer. The bed his children had likely been conceived in – the bed he and Padmé had spent their wedding night in – was now little better than kindling. He thought the troopers had used the pillows as target practice. Her fresher was coated in creams and shampoos and a small lake of her favourite perfume, spilling over the splinters of the broken bottle.

"Leia!" Anakin shouted again, ever more frantic. "Leia, for Force's sake –"

Suddenly he realised he was standing in Luke's bedroom: the boots in front of him belonged to a child, there were speeder schematics on the floor, a collection of adventure holonovels scattered about –

"Luke! Leia, answer me!"

Above his head, there was a brief hissing noise.

Anakin jumped out of his skin, sabre coming up as the trapdoor descended noiselessly, the blue glow illuminating his daughter's frightened face.

"Leia." Breath of relief barely recognisable as her name.

"Dad!"

Anakin barely had time to collapse his blade before she dropped into his arms. He held her close, relief making him stagger under her small weight. Leia buried her face in the side of his neck. She was shaking as she clung to him. Her pants and boots were damp, he realised; they couldn't have been up here all that long.

"Thank you," he whispered brokenly into her hair – to the Force, to Padmé's Goddess, to Obi-Wan for all he knew. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

When the rush of relief had faded a little, and Leia's shaking had stopped, he set her down on her feet, pressed his gloved hand to her cheek, and looked up a second time.

Luke was not a large boy, scrawny as his sister, with too-long blonde hair that was straighter and far tidier than his father's. He had Padmé's bone structure, her fine nose, the beginnings of what was definitely Anakin's own cleft in his chin. He was staring down at his father and sister with fear and longing and loneliness all rolled up into one, and he jerked when Anakin met his eyes.

"Luke," he said, and held out both arms.

Luke hesitated a split second, then he fell into them the same way Leia had.

"Dad," he whispered into Anakin's ear and pressed his nose to his father's shoulder, fingers digging into his back. Anakin held him as tightly as he had Leia. He thought he felt something shift and snap into place inside himself: a hollow filled, a puzzle piece fitted with its mate.

His _son_.

He didn't realise he'd dropped to his knees until Leia climbed into his lap, worming her way into their embrace. Luke put an arm around her without hesitation. Anakin kissed his son's temple, nose in his hair.

"Luke," he said hoarsely: benediction, homecoming, claiming. His son. His blood, his family now, finally, almost complete.

Luke pulled back from him, blue eyes swimming with tears, and brushed a hand over his father's face.

"I didn't know Anakin Skywalker cried," he said, smiling tremulously.

Anakin tried to grin. "You don't mind? Having a terrorist for a father?"

Luke's eyes widened. "Mind?" he echoed. "My _Dad_. Is _Anakin_. _Skywalker_."

Leia sniffed. "He thinks you're awesome," she said. And then, defiantly, "So do I!"

Anakin had to laugh, gathering them close again. "I do my best, my loves."

*********

They regrouped in the attic, because Anakin proclaimed it an awesome hiding place, and because there were ration bars and blankets up there. Anakin wedged himself in between two crates of... something..., back against one, legs bent, toes of his boots pressed against the other. Leia propped herself against his left knee the way she always did. Luke sat at Anakin's other side, his own bony knees digging into his father's leg.

"All right," Anakin said when they were wrapped in blankets and chewing their way through a bag of ration bars. He slung an arm around Luke's shoulders easily and drew the boy back against his chest. Luke snuggled in immediately. "Begin at the beginning, Commander."

Leia grinned at him (still a bit watery, but any grin counted as a win in this situation) and started to talk, starting with the day she and Luke had met, the fight, the holos, the detention, the weeks it had taken them to come to terms with their new relationship before finally deciding to run away.

"And at first we thought we could get away with doing it like in the book, you know, where they switch places, but Luke said that it wouldn't work, and so we both just came straight to Mom and kind of crossed our fingers that she didn't hate you or anything."

Anakin blinked. "Hate me?"

Leia wriggled. "Why else would she send us away?"

"Oh, sweetheart. I'm sorry we ever let you think that."

"S'OK, Dad," Luke said softly. "Mom explained – about the Emperor."

It was almost the first thing he'd said since they had come up here, seeming content to sit and bask in his father's presence. Anakin dropped a kiss into his hair.

"Yes. We decided – if he could see for himself that my son was no threat to him – he'd be less likely to come after you and Padmé, and not likely to ever realise there was Leia as well. It'd be – he'd be happy to gloat over the fact that I'd never know you. He'd think of it as part of my punishment for defying him, being separated from the people I love. It would appeal to his twisted sense of... poetic justice."

"But now he's worked it out," Leia said. "Right? That's why they arrested Mom."

"It's a trap for you, Dad," Luke agreed.

"Hmm," Anakin said. "Maybe. But there's something else, you see. Another reason why Padmé and I separated was so that she could get us information from inside the Senate."

"Mom was spying on the Emperor?" Luke asked, looking up at him.

"Pretty much, yeah."

The boy's eyes widened. "_Awesome_," he said. "But wait. If they arrested Mom for spying, then they might not know about you or Leia!"

"Well, that's the question, isn't it?" Anakin said thoughtfully. "Which is it? And does it even matter? I'm going after her anyway."

"She said she'd kill you herself if you tried," Leia said.

Anakin laughed sharply. "We can fight about that once she's safe."

"She said to tell you she loved you very much."

The twins looked away diplomatically while their father rubbed at his eyes and drew a few deep, steadying breaths.

Once Anakin was fairly certain he wasn't about to break down and cry in front of his eleven year old twin children, he looked back at them, forcing a smile. "Did she say anything else?"

Luke reached into his tunic under the blanket wrapped around his shoulders and drew a datacard out, offering it to Anakin. "Just to give you this."

Anakin turned it over in his flesh hand, thumb rubbing at the corners. "The stolen plans."

"Mom _stole_ something?" Luke said. "She's a spy and she _stole_ something?"

Anakin grinned. "It wouldn't be the first time. So maybe they realised she was the thief, and then started looking into her past..."

"That sithspawn Tarkin arrested her," Leia said fiercely.

"Personally? What an honour."

"What are we going to do?" Luke asked.

Anakin pursed his lips. "Find out how they found out that she was the thief. We can't afford a leak. And we need to know where they're holding her."

"She was at a conference on Sollust," Luke said. "She only came here because Madam Dormé called to tell her I'd left."

"Done a bunk, Obi-Wan woulda called it."

"General Kenobi?"

"Yeah."

Luke looked stunned. "It's all true, isn't it? All the stories. They're all true."

Anakin smiled. "That would depend on which stories you've heard."

*********

In the end, Dad decided that the best thing to do was take Mom's ship and head out to Sollust as quickly as possible to try and find out who the leak was. Sabé should still be there, along with Threepio and Captain Typho, so maybe they could shed some light on the situation.

Luke was expecting Dad to send them straight back to school, but he went on making plans with every appearance of wanting to actually take them with him, and if Luke hadn't been convinced that Dad was awesome before, he was now.

But all his anticipation withered and died when he saw what Tarkin's men had done to his home. They picked their way downstairs through the destroyed house, Luke's hand gripped firmly in his sister's.

"It's going to take forever to clean up," Luke said shakily.

"There won't be any cleaning up," Dad said. "I know this is probably hard for you, son, but you're not coming back here even after I get Padmé back. It's too dangerous for that now."

Leia gasped. "You mean..."

"I mean we're going to be together from now on," Dad said. "_All_ of us."

Luke stared at him. Dad was standing in the hallway with his arms crossed over his chest as he spoke. He looked very much the Rebel leader, with his lightsabre hanging off his belt and that scar over his eye. But there was also – there was the boy in Luke's holo in the faint little smile, the tilt of his head. For the first time, Luke realised that he had his father's eyes.

Leia tugged at his hand, eager for a reaction. He summoned all his self-control and the poise that Mom had taught him.

"You'll get bored with me," he said cheerfully.

She rolled her eyes. "Only cause you're a goody-goody."

"Am not!"

"Are too."

"Kids," Dad said, and there was something almost gleeful in the way he spoke, like he was happy to finally get to use the plural, to be with both of them. "Shall we go rescue your mother?"

"The landing pad's that way, on the right," Luke said, pointing.

Dad grinned at him. "I know, Luke."

"You and Mom used to live here?"

"We were married here," he said, leading the way down the corridor to the landing pad. Leia tugged at Luke's hand again when Dad turned his back. Luke squeezed her hand in response.

"Well?" she whispered.

"It feels – Dad feels –"

"Safer than anyone else in the whole galaxy."

"Yeah."

"Like he can do _anything_."

"That too."

"Cause he can."

"_Obviously_."

*********

Artoo was a very unhappy little astromech by the time Anakin set Padmé's ship down in the meadow. He was launching into a long list of complaints about Anakin's thoughtlessness and general bad conduct as the hatch opened, but when he saw Leia, all that was forgotten in favour of an enthusiastic reunion.

"Artoo, Artoo, there's someone you have to meet –"

Luke saw: a rather battered-looking blue and white droid, beeping furiously at Leia, who seemed to understand at least the basics of his language, and sitting behind them, half-sunk in the snow, an Eta-2 Actis class interceptor, painted yellow. It had been damaged and patched up again over and over, he could tell, it was at least as old as he was by now, and the paint job was covered in scratches, and it took his breath away.

He staggered a few feet through the clinging snow to stand right next to it. A real Jedi interceptor! He'd wanted to fly one of these since he was old enough to know what it was, understand its history, realise just how fast he would be able to push it, the manoeuvrability it must have. The fighter that the Great Negotiator and the Hero With No Fear had flown in some of their greatest battles, most meaningful victories.

His father's fighter.

Luke reached out and touched it.

"Hey, you still with me?" Leia demanded. He turned to look at her, caught between awe and delight.

"It's a Jedi interceptor," he said.

"It's Dad's interceptor," Leia said, amused.

"My Dad is _Anakin Skywalker_."

"You said that already."

"I'm having trouble believing it."

She laughed at him.

"Don't scoff," Luke said. "He's been my hero forever. And now he's my _Dad_. And there's a Jedi interceptor sitting _right in front of me_."

Leia giggled. "You're geeking out over this, aren't you?"

Luke nodded, grinning like an idiot, and they stood there and laughed at each other as Dad came out of the ship.

"It'll be a squeeze, but I think we can fit her in the cargo... what are you two laughin' about?"

"Nothing, _Dad_," the twins chorused, and then started to laugh all over again.

Anakin felt himself smile in turn. Artoo was pushing forward through the snow, nudging at Leia, who grinned down at him.

"Yes, this is him. Luke, meet R2D2 –"

"Astromech and babysitter," Dad interjected.

Luke cocked his head and smiled at the droid. "Hi," he said. Drew a deep breath. "I'm Luke Skywalker."

Leia's grin lit up the whole Lake Country.

*********

The trip from Naboo to Sollust took just under four hours. Anakin slumped into the pilot's seat (Padmé had sat here not forty-eight hours ago) and ordered the twins off to bed to grab some sleep while they could. Leia nodded briskly – she knew when her Dad meant business and when she had licence to mess around – but Luke paused, looking uncertain. Anakin raised his eyebrows at him.

In a burst of resolve, the boy crossed the cabin and threw his arms around Anakin's neck. Anakin hugged him back briefly before drawing away to cup his face in his hands.

"Hey," he said softly. "Everything's going to be all right, Luke, I promise. But I need you to be strong for me, understand? I don't want to let you two out of my sight right now, but I need to be able to trust you to be strong."

Luke's mouth firmed. "I _can_ do it," he said. "I really can, Dad. I just..."

Anakin thought of another sandy-haired little boy with blue eyes and a mother far away and a brand-new father figure who carried a lightsabre and didn't really know the first thing about reassuring nine year olds, and smiled at him.

"I know, son," he said.

At least he had _some_ idea of how to deal with children, he thought ruefully, winking at Leia after Luke turned his back.

They were holding hands again as they left the cabin. Interesting. Leia had no objection to hugs from him, but she wasn't otherwise very tactile. Maybe it was some sibling-bonding thing. He'd ask, in a few months when they were all more comfortable with each other.

For now, he had a traitor to find, plans to secure, children to protect, and oh yes, there was the minor matter of his wife's rescue.

"Just another day at the office," Anakin muttered. "Obi-Wan's probably finding this deeply amusing."

Artoo agreed with him. He also offered the opinion that Luke had promise, although he seemed a little wimpier than Leia. Anakin laughed.

"He'll toughen up," he said. "Unfortunately. They should have both been allowed to live his life."

Artoo told him that on the whole, he was grateful he hadn't had to deal with both of them from an early age.

"Wait till they get old enough to start demanding missions of their own."

Apparently Luke already wanted to fly his fighter.

"I'd like that," Anakin said. "To teach him. Leia's good, but she's not passionate about it. I'd like to get to share that with my son."

As long as Anakin didn't try teaching the boy to podrace, Artoo supposed.

"I think Padmé might object to me teaching him to podrace, Artoo."

She always did have better sense than Anakin.

He wasn't wrong there.

*********

When they reached Sollust, Anakin got a hold of himself and resorted to mind-tricking the security forces to let the ship through – not something he ever liked to do. It was a kind of cheating, and it was also a form of slavery, although Obi-Wan had never been able to grasp why Anakin saw it like that, and they had had more than one argument on the subject over the years.

It was an awful risk, coming here. Even more of a one than either of the twins realised. Half the galaxy recognised Anakin's face these days, and there was always the possibility that Senator Amidala's staff had been taken into custody after her own arrest. But Anakin was strong enough in the Force to be able to mind-trick half the conference centre from orbit if he had to, and it was imperative he found the being who had betrayed Padmé to Tarkin. It was too much to hope for that Leia, and by extension Luke's paternity, would remain a secret for much longer, but there were others to think of: Bail Organa, who had become as close a friend to Anakin as he had always been to Padmé and Obi-Wan over the last few years, Mon Mothma, Bana Breemu and half a dozen others who had supported the Rebellion, whether openly or in secret, over the years.

Anakin had to know who had been exposed, and he had to know now, or Palpatine would start a rampage through the Senate that would result in dozens if not hundreds of deaths and the virtual destruction of Senatorial and public sympathy for the Rebellion. He couldn't allow that.

He drew a breath. Showtime.

Flipped the comm on and punched in Sabé's personal number.

She answered.

"Nertay."

"Naberrie here," Anakin said. "How's that cargo I charged you with?"

Over the commlink, he could hear her gasp quietly, the breath of air rustling and crackling as static in the connection.

"Not so great. One of our caretakers messed up badly. The corporation hasn't decided yet whether or not to buy the rest of the stock, and they're keeping the trouble quiet in case the competition finds out."

Did she really mean no one else had been arrested yet? No one at all? As for keeping it quiet...

Risky business. Anakin made his decision.

"All right then. Get your people and meet me at the public spaceport, dock 593. We'll discuss it there."

She must've already left the conference centre when Anakin commed. Sabé was waiting in the dock the authorities had assigned to him, arms crossed over her chest. Threepio was with her, standing near the doors; Sabé had probably ordered him to stay back, just in case.

She was also armed. Anakin's gut twisted; if she was the traitor after all, if she forced him to kill her, would Padmé ever forgive him?

Would he ever forgive himself? He knew how close to the Dark Side he was dancing just by contemplating this. But he could not allow her to take what she knew to Tarkin and the Emperor. She had already had enough time to tell them everything if she so chose.

Anakin nodded at her through the cockpit window and opened the hatch, silently inviting her up. He met her at the top of the gangway.

"You're mad, coming here," she snapped at him.

"The leak," he said.

"It's Typho."

"Padmé's Security Chief."

"S'right. His uncle is a Moff, don't forget. We did. After all this time, we let our guard down, just enough. It's my fault; I thought... ah. I'm sorry, Anakin."

Too good to be true. Too neat. Too obvious.

Sabé could see the thoughts in his face.

"Read my mind, Jedi," she said. "I'm telling the truth. I love Padmé like a sister; I love that boy like he's my own. And Obi-Wan and I were always friends. So were you and I."

"I can't afford to make mistakes," Anakin said quietly.

"I know."

He touched her face with his left hand, reaching out in the Force, gauging her truthfulness, her sincerity. Finally, he sighed.

"I'd apologise for being a suspicious bastard."

"Yeah, well. You trusted Palpatine once, too."

"Oh!" Anakin winced theatrically, and she laughed.

"If you've come in her ship then you've seen Luke?"

Anakin couldn't keep back his sudden grin, wide and delighted. "Yes. Finally!"

"He thinks you hung the moon," Sabé said, smiling back. "All of them. Did you tell him the truth?"

"We worked it out for ourselves," Leia said from behind her. Sabé jumped and spun to face her, hand dropping to her blaster and then falling away.

"_Sithing_ hell!"

Leia stuck out a hand, grinning. "I'm Leia Skywalker."

"Sabé Nertay. Pleased to... finally meet you." She shook hands with Leia, casting a glare over her shoulder at a visibly amused Anakin.

"You brought an eleven year old –"

"Two eleven year olds," Luke said. "Hi, Sabé."

"Oh, Force," Sabé said helplessly. "I stand by my earlier statement. You _are_ mad."

"It was either bring them along or leave them at the house by themselves," Anakin explained as she and Luke embraced. Leave his children in the wreckage of their mother's home and hope against hope that the Imps wouldn't come back for them? Not likely. Better to have them with him, danger or no, than abandon them like that in the desolation the Imps had left at Varykino.

"Which is all well and good, but I'm pretty sure the only reason I haven't been arrested yet is because they were in fact waiting for something like this to happen," Sabé said. "They want to flush us out, Anakin. Typho might not know about Leia, but he's sure you're Luke's father."

"Wait, you knew about Leia all along?" Luke demanded. "And you didn't _tell_ me?"

"That would have defeated the whole point, don't you think?" Anakin said dryly.

"You can't trust any of them," Leia said, glaring. Luke fixed Sabé with a betrayed look, leaving Anakin to wonder what kind of reception he would have gotten at Varykino if Padmé hadn't been arrested. Something was telling him it would have been a loud one.

So Typho was the traitor. He hadn't been expecting that; to be honest, he'd almost forgotten about the man. It made things both easier and more difficult: easier, because he knew now that his friends were still loyal, and more difficult, because he had no way of knowing what Typho knew, and how far he'd go in his betrayal.

Anakin had to get to him, and fast. He took five seconds to consider his options. Then the famous Skywalker talent for split-second decision making that had won him more battles than he cared to remember kicked in.

"Sabé, if they're keeping it quiet, how did you know about Padmé's arrest?"

"Typho was informed of it. I overheard. I think they're waiting to make it official because they think it'll be easier to reel you in if the Senate and the galaxy in general isn't up in arms over the arrest of Senator Amidala for a traitor and a Rebel. That way they can concentrate on waiting for you instead of scrambling around dealing with the press and possible indignation from the other Senators."

"In short, you're under surveillance, but they won't actually move against you until I show up, just in case."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "I shook the guy on my tail coming over here. Just what are you up to?"

Anakin grinned. "Skip down the ramp and get Threepio," he said. "You're going to leave here with the twins, now."

Sabé started to grin. "And you?"

"Artoo and I are going to head over to the conference centre to hack into the computer mainframe and find out where they're holding Padmé. One stolen Imperial uniform and a hijacked shuttle later..."

"And you're still flying by the seat of your pants."

Anakin grinned at her. "Well, yeah."

Neither of them noticed the looks the twins were exchanging. Then Luke coughed. "Erm. I have a better idea."

The two adults turned to look at him, surprised.

Leia grinned. "You should listen. Luke's ideas tend to turn out real well."

Anakin nodded slowly.

Luke swallowed. "I can go back to Mom's quarters with Sabé and hack into the computer mainframe."

Leia's jaw dropped. "You can do that?"

He nodded, still looking at Anakin. "One console's all I need."

"And you think that'll be less noticeable than a stray astromech plugging into a wall terminal?" Sabé demanded.

Luke glared at her. "Way to miss the point, Sabé. No, I think it'll be _more_ noticeable. The Imps'll be following me around trying to work out where I came from and what the hell a runaway Senator's son is doing here – not to mention trying to make me keep it under wraps that Mom's disappeared, cause they still wanna catch Dad. The officials here'll never openly arrest an _eleven year old_ kid in a conference centre filled with Senators who almost certainly won't all be the Emperor's bootlickers. The Commander won't be Tarkin, he won't have the guts or the authorityto do anything to me . And in the meantime, an Imperial general's uniform and a shuttle go quietly missing, and no one ever notices, because they're too busy breathing a sigh of relief that Sabé's marching me back to school for a month's worth of detention and a freezing of my allowance, and then later, if there's a brief transmission between this ship and the missing shuttle, well, by the time they figure it out, it'll be too late."

Anakin realised he was staring at his son in amazement with his mouth hanging open like an idiot. Then he started to grin.

"He's got his useful points, hasn't he?" he said to Leia.

She smirked at him. "D'you think we oughta keep him around?"

"Oh, yeah. I think so. He's too dangerous to let run loose."

Luke beamed with pride.

*********

In the end, they agreed that the best thing to do would be to have Luke march in through the front doors of the conference centre with Sabé in tow, clearly visible to everyone in the entrance hall and the corridors between there and Padmé's quarters. If he so happened to run into anyone he knew on the way, well, so much the better. Leia meanwhile would stay with the ship and the droids to wait for them to get back: a prospect she was by no means thrilled with, but it couldn't be helped.

Anakin shook his head when Artoo made to come with him. "I'm sorry, buddy. I'm probably going to be crawling through a few places you won't be able to follow."

Artoo was indignant.

"I know, I know. But I won't exactly have time for anything more sophisticated than hitting some General over the head, taking his uniform, and mindtricking a few troopers into letting me get away with a shuttle."

Artoo remained unconvinced.

"Then I'd better not get into any trouble!"

Threepio, on the other hand, was more than happy to stay with the ship. "Why, Master Anakin! It has been a long time – good gracious, you've met Master Luke at last – and Miss Sabé says that Mistress Padmé is in trouble, you will do something about that, won't you, Master Anakin – and who is this?"

Leia giggled. "I'm Leia Skywalker," she said, grinning up at the golden droid. "Luke's told me an awful lot about you."

"Mistress Leia! My, you have grown – the last time I saw you you were still a tiny baby – humans do change so quickly, don't they, Artoo – no, _you're_ just as scruffy-looking as ever."

Anakin coughed pointedly. "All right, everyone. Time to go."

He hunkered down so he was looking up at his son and put his hands on the boy's shoulders. "You don't have to do this. Not if you're scared."

Luke drew himself up. "I'm not scared," he said firmly. "I can do this, Dad. And Sabé will be right there with me. I'm just here to see Mom; I don't know anything about anything. Remember? Leia's gonna have it worse, waiting for us."

Anakin nodded slowly, drawing him into a hug. "I'll see you soon, Luke," he said softly. "Remember, the Force will be with you. Always."

Luke looked at him with wide eyes; was it the first time he'd heard the words? But then Leia was there, eyes shining.

"I'd kind of really like both my parents back some time, if it's not too much trouble," she said.

"You'll get them," Anakin promised, hugging her too.

"May the Force be with you, Dad."

"And with you, little one."

Sabé shook hands with him, brief and firm. "Good luck, Skywalker."

He smiled briefly. "In my experience, Nertay, there's no such thing as luck."

Once, as a child, he'd thought that favourite saying of Obi-Wan's darkly ominous. Now, it was a comforting thought.

*********

"Arranging" for a new uniform was the easy part, even if it did pull across his shoulders. Tracking down Typho was less so; the man appeared to have been reassigned and promoted almost immediately following his betrayal of Padmé. There was no denying that the Empire liked to reward those who served it faithfully... at least temporarily.

Anakin hadn't mind-tricked so many people in the last eleven years as he did that day. It got easier with every time he did it, which made the bile rising in his throat and the twisting of distaste in his gut that much harder to control, but at last a young officer who'd been holed up in his office writing a love letter to his wife pointed him towards Typho's new quarters in the wing the officers had taken over for the duration of the conference.

Luckily, it was about half a mile away from the rooms where Luke was currently hacking into the computer mainframe. Anakin suppressed another burst of pride: mechanics were one thing, but he'd never had the time for learning the ins and outs of computers – or, to be fair, the money. Slaves could come by discarded mechanical parts without much trouble. Computers were expensive.

Plainly, that was not a consideration that had factored into Luke's upbringing. Anakin couldn't help but regret that Leia had not had the same opportunities, but all in all they'd turned out rather well, he thought smugly: sharp, bright, brave, determined.

Everything he'd hoped for them, and more.

Typho had been given the rank of Commander, and his new quarters were appropriately spacious, with an ensuite fresher. Anakin didn't bother with the door code, simply sliding it open with the Force. Typho was inside, going over a datapad – reports, maybe? He looked up in surprise when Anakin stepped in. The uniform registered on him first, because he was on his feet and saying "General..." before Anakin saw the recognition cross his face.

"Ah," Typho said quietly. "I might have known you'd get past them."

Anakin shrugged. "I'm extremely good at what I do," he said calmly. The lightsabre in his right hand had never felt so heavy.

"Of course you are."

"Why'd you do it?"

Typho shrugged. "Why d'you think? Power, political connections..." he barked a laugh. "You're destroying the galaxy, Skywalker. Isn't one war enough? Do you know how many people are still suffering because of you? Attacked convoys, interrupted supply lines, families torn apart because of your rhetoric and your melodrama. It has to stop, man. There has to be an end to this. The entire galaxy needs time to heal."

"As long as Sidious still controls it, the only things we'll get are stagnation and decay."

"So say you," the other man said quietly.

"I do." Anakin drew a ragged breath. "You know why I'm here."

Typho nodded slowly. "Yes," he said quietly, the blue glow making his face look ghostly. Corpse-like. "Yes, I do."


	3. Chapter 3

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** The last two sections of this chapter are probably closer to an R than a PG-13.  
_

**air and angels, chapter three**_  
_

_Scheduled for termination_. Well, it wasn't as if Padmé hadn't been expecting it.

And Anakin had the twins. That was all that mattered.

The binders chafed her wrists every time she tried to move. There were more dignified ways for an Imperial Senator to spend her last hours than sprawling on the floor, but with her hands behind her back and her head still swimming from the drugs, the best Padmé could manage was to get into a sitting position against the wall of her cell. She thought about drawing her knees up to her chest for warmth, but decided against it. For one thing, it would make her look like a frightened child when they arrived.

For another, she'd probably tear her dress again. There were two long rents in it already from where she'd been scrambling around on the floor trying to get upright without throwing up, and that was something else to loathe Tarkin for: Padmé had worn this dress for Anakin, it was just the same blue as that old nightdress of hers he'd always liked...

Anakin. No chance she'd ever see him again now... but he would be all right, the twins would help him through it. Especially Luke. Leia would grieve, but Luke would be devastated. Ani would stop short of doing anything ridiculous and suicidal in the wake of her death for their sakes. He wouldn't permit them to be left completely alone.

Padmé let her head fall back against the wall and groaned softly. Gods, it was cold in here, the chill of the metallic floor seeping through her dress. Cold and dim, and that cot-ledge thing was tilting alarmingly. Grimacing, Padmé closed her eyes and fought down nausea. She'd walk to this execution with her head held high, not be dragged along between two troopers because she was too dizzy to stand after they'd pumped her veins full of sedatives.

Of course, if she hadn't punched that Lieutenant, they wouldn't have drugged her in the first place. It was a quandary, but in the end Padmé decided the satisfaction she had gotten from hearing the crack of the smug little sithspawn's nose breaking had been worth it.

They were already coming. Footsteps along the corridor, quick and decisive; they came to a halt outside her cell, and then the door slid up.

She had almost been expecting the Lieutenant with the broken nose, come to gloat as he ferried her to her death, so it didn't really register with her until he was kneeling by her side that the man who'd just walked into her cell was, in fact, her husband.

"Padmé. Angel, are you all right?" Hands cupping her face, one gloved, one bare, breath on her face – smelled of mints, he always had liked those sweets – there was a gash in his left eyebrow now, deep laugh lines around his eyes...

"You need a haircut," she heard herself say, and Anakin laughed shakily.

"I'll take that as a no. How about standing?"

"Definitely not. You could carry me out?"

Anakin put on a thoughtful look. "Has possibilities. But then how would I fight?"

"Hadn't thought of that," she admitted.

He laughed again, leaning in to rest his forehead against hers. "You look terrible," he said, left hand trailing across her shoulder and running down her arm to her wrist; he touched the binders, and Padmé could hear the _snap_ of them coming undone. Anakin lifted her into his lap and drew the binders off, dropping them to the floor. Sighing, Padmé pressed her face into the side of his neck. He smelled of engine oil and ozone and starfighter fuel and leather and the slightly musky smell of _Anakin_, and she could have stayed there quite happily for the rest of her life.

Then she frowned. "What do you mean, terrible? I wore this dress especially for you."

"Oh, Force," Anakin said helplessly, and clutched her even closer; his gloved hand tilted her head back gently and came to rest on her forehead. "I'm going to try and get this drug outta your system, all right?"

"Depends how long it'll take," Padmé murmured, but he had already closed his eyes. Warmth swept through her, creeping into every cell in her body and lighting up her nerves. A minute later, her head had stopped spinning.

"I'm not much of a healer, but tha – umf!"

All dizziness gone, Padmé grabbed him by the collar and kissed him.

That took a few minutes.

By the time they drew apart, Padmé was breathless and triumphant, and Anakin was breathless, delighted, and struggling to summon up a list of reasons why laying her down on the floor and making love to her there and then was a Very Bad Idea.

"It's nice to know you're not a hallucination," his wife said smugly.

"No, but unless we get going soon, we're going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble," Anakin managed.

"Right," Padmé said, steadying herself with a hand on his shoulder as she climbed to her feet and smoothed her hair out of her face. "Um. Blaster?"

Anakin shook his head. "Can you shoot straight yet?"

She glared at him.

He jerked his head to the left. "Three dead troopers down there, you can have one of those."

"The twins?"

"Safe with my people."

She couldn't tell where his lightsabre was – somewhere inside his clothes, probably, but he wasn't carrying a blaster himself, of course (_so uncivilised_, Obi-Wan murmured in her mind). Imperial officer's uniform, he looked a little pale, but otherwise healthy, no obvious scrapes on him but you could never tell with Anakin –

You hadn't been able to tell, at least. This new Anakin, this man she'd had a brief glimpse of five years ago in the Hoth system, was a far different creature to the young man she remembered. Harder, yes, sharper, and something about his eyes made her think he could drop an errant ensign with a look at a hundred yards or more, but steadier too. Unshakeable; that was the only word that fit him now.

Padmé realised he was watching her study him with a faint smile, self-confident where once he would have squirmed under her scrutiny.

"Like what you see?"

"Did you get what you came for?" she asked. Words spoken at Hoth, the last time they had been together.

Anakin grinned. "Dastardly sabotage of Moff Tarkin's flagship, and my beautiful wife."

Padmé leaned up and brushed her lips over his, thrilling to the nearness of him, his breath on her face. "I adore what I see, Master Jedi. But we really should get out of here."

He leaned towards her, mouth softening into a real smile. "You were the one doing the staring, Senator."

She didn't even have time to object to that before he was pulling her out of the cell, hand wrapped around her wrist.

The cell block was still deserted. There were indeed three dead troopers sporting lightsabre wounds scattered around the control centre at the end of the block, between them and the turbolift; Padmé bent to snatch a blaster on the way past. The walls bore scorch marks and a chair had been shot up.

"How did you get in here?"

"The uniform," Anakin said dryly. "You'd be amazed at how little they question it. But now I've got you in tow I'm gonna have to be a little sneakier."

"In tow?" Padmé objected, following him into the lift. He wasn't telling her everything, she was sure of it, but there wasn't time for that now. "But you _do_ realise this is a trap for you. They knew you'd come after me."

Anakin sighed. "For once they weren't wrong. Listen, I know how Tarkin's mind works. I've faced him in battle often enough. All he had to do to catch us both was send in a battalion while I was freeing you from that cell; we would have been caught like womp-rats in a Jawa trap. But he wants to gloat, my love, like Palpatine. He's an effective commander but his ego gets in the way. He'll probably wait for us in the hangar bay, have a couple hundred troopers surrounding the shuttle I stole at Sollust."

"So what are you proposing we do?"

He grinned. "Steal another one."

"Anakin!"

"No, really. The new Destroyers are just that bit larger that they have a second, smaller hangar bay up by the stern, carrying one more squad of fighters... and, according to my information, Regional Governor Moff Tarkin's private shuttle."

Padmé was momentarily speechless, which fit the situation rather well, as the turbolift came to a hissing halt just then and the doors slid back. Anakin's lightsabre appeared from somewhere in his uniform, held loosely in his hand as he peered into the corridor. It was deserted; they slipped out of the lift, took a left, hurried down a long, empty stretch of hallway and then ducked right to hide from a patrol of stormtroopers being guided through the ship by a mouse droid.

When Padmé was certain the troopers were out of earshot, she whispered, "Where do you even get this intel from?"

"I pay the Bothans a lot of money."

"You mean Bail Organa pays the Bothans a lot of money."

"Galen mind-tricked an officer into giving him the intel during a raid on one of Tarkin's supply ships a couple of weeks ago."

Padmé pursed her lips, but didn't say anything. If Anakin trusted this Galen, then that would be enough for her, she told herself firmly.

With a pang, she realised that there were probably whole armies of people he now trusted whom she had never even met.

They must have walked for twenty minutes or more in hurried silence after that, delayed by the need to dodge patrols and duck away from stray officers or droids. Time after time, Anakin's Force senses let them avoid or distract groups of troopers. There was a particularly tense moment passing the open blast doors to the med facilities, where a few medics were bustling around and might have looked up and seen them at any moment, but they got past without incident. On her own, Padmé would have quickly become lost in the maze of unchanging corridors. She wondered if Anakin was using the Force to guide them through, or if the time he'd spent on the forebears of this ship design during the Clone Wars was what was helping them along.

Not long after passing the medbay, they were forced to hide in an empty office to avoid another patrol. Anakin stood with his ear pressed to the door, grim and concentrated. Padmé leaned closer, thinking the beat of those heavy footsteps was changed, quicker...

"They're running?"

"Tarkin's realised we're not heading back his way," Anakin said quietly. "We've snuck around enough. Think you can run?"

She nodded, already gathering her skirts up in her left hand in preparation. Anakin slid the door open slowly, eyes far away, probably reaching out through the Force. He glanced back at her and nodded, then darted out, heading left. Padmé followed him, intensely aware of how _loud_ they were being.

More than once they caught glimpses of troops running in opposite directions, officers shouting in the distance. Anakin looked savagely amused when he saw them.

"Wonder how long it'll take him to admit to himself I know about the second hangar bay?"

"Hopefully, just that bit longer," Padmé said. He nodded and picked up the pace again; they must have travelled almost the entire length of the ship by now. Two troopers standing guard outside an armoury met a quick, savage death under Anakin's lightsabre; then a third, coming round the corner, was killed by his own deflected blaster bolt.

"Getting close," Anakin muttered. "It's up there – to the left... there's a group of troopers. Not too many, nothing we can't handle." He looked back at her, eyes concerned. "Right?"

"Right," Padmé said firmly. "Hey, remember the _Malevolence_?"

As she'd hoped, the reference to their little adventure on board Count Dooku's prospective flagship made him smile. At least they hadn't brought the droids along this time, but Obi-Wan –

His absence, Padmé thought, would forever hurt them both.

They snuck up to the hangar doors one at either side. Anakin met her eyes as he raised his left hand; she nodded briefly, quenching a twitch of nervousness. When was the last time she'd done anything like this? Not since her pregnancy, surely. There was a difference between keeping up your blaster practice and having your husband's back in an actual fight. Padmé gripped the blaster more firmly and reminded herself: _squeeze, don't pull. Remember, if you fail, you're both dead. And the twins would be left alone._

She couldn't allow that to happen. Not now there was a chance Palpatine realised there were two of them, and that they had been reunited with people who could teach them the Jedi arts.

Anakin opened the hangar doors with the Force.

Padmé took out two troopers opposite her with a shot each, surprised at how easily it came back to her; muscle memory, she supposed, survival instinct old as time, once learned never forgotten. Anakin's blade was a whirl of blue, deflecting shots back at the troopers, and Padmé found it fairly easy to pick off the others from her position at the door. Maybe twenty in the whole hangar? No, closer to thirty. Anakin had been right, it wasn't big.

Tarkin's private shuttle looked the same as any other in the Imperial fleet, cold and gleaming. Padmé was absolutely determined not to leave the cockpit once they were on board. Who knew what the sithspawn kept on there?

"Wait there a minute..." Anakin murmured to her, moving into the middle of the bay, sabre still ignited and ready. Obi-Wan would have been appalled at the thought, but Padmé decided he definitely looked more dashing in that uniform than in his robes – less solemn and more like a pirate.

There were a few crates piled around the blast doors to Padmé's right; that was probably why she didn't see the lieutenant when she followed Anakin out into the bay. A blow to the head, a hand on her wrist, an arm wrapping around her waist –

She cried out, and Anakin spun, but too late, and already the noise of their brief but furious battle was drawing troopers towards them – Anakin deflected a the shots coming from the corridor back at them, looking furious, and strode towards her, stepping heedlessly over the bodies of two dead troopers.

For one awful moment, Padmé understood exactly why Palaptine had been so keen to turn her husband to the Dark Side.

Then the lieutenant holding her hostage held out his right hand towards Anakin, who stopped. Padmé couldn't see at first, still dizzy from the blow, but as it came nearer to her throat, glinting evilly in the harsh overhead lights, she understood.

A vibroblade. Activate it, and just touching it to her skin could well be enough to cut her throat, leave her bleeding to death.

The lieutenant waved it under Padmé's chin tauntingly. "Anakin Skywalker, I presume," he said coldly. "Governor Tarkin briefed us that you were expected to come after the Senator – admittedly, he'd arranged for a proper welcome downstairs."

"I'm sorry to disappoint him," Anakin said calmly, and somehow that new calm was more terrifying than all of the overt anger he would have displayed at this situation ten years ago.

It was so easy sometimes to forget just how truly powerful he was.

Her captor didn't appear to notice; he gave a short laugh. "I'm sure. Put down your weapon, Jedi."

"Scum," Anakin said.

Padmé could almost see the man blink. "There's no need for you to be insulting."

Anakin grinned wolfishly. "No, it's your line. _Jedi scum_. Common insult, popularised during the war by such august individuals as General Grievous, and various members of the Trade Federation."

"I'll thank you not to make fun of me," the lieutenant said coldly. "Permit me to remind you that I am holding a knife to the throat of a woman Moff Tarkin informs us you care about rather deeply."

"The word is _love_, Lieutenant," Anakin said, and there was a bite in his voice when he spoke the last word, the snap of a man used to being obeyed by people who held that rank. It couldn't quite drown out the quick footsteps of another group of troopers running down the corridor outside.

This was about to get really, really ugly.

"Call them off," Anakin said softly. "Call your dogs off, let her go, and you might just walk out of here alive."

The knife twitched in her captor's hands. _Finally_, Padmé thought. He was getting nervous.

Not nervous enough. "Battalion! Fire at will!"

This time, Anakin didn't even bother with his lightsabre. He simply raised a hand and deflected the blasts with the Force, how Padmé had no idea, she'd never seen him do that before, but the merest flick of his fingertips also had the blast doors rushing closed as the troopers ran towards them.

The sound they made as they slammed shut was horribly ominous.

"Are we done yet?" Anakin asked softly.

Padmé thought the lieutenant was furious... and frightened. "You can't harm me without killing her."

"No, probably not."

Silence for a few moments. Anakin never took his eyes off the lieutenant's face.

"How about a trade, then?" he suggested.

Padmé froze. He didn't mean... he couldn't possibly mean – he _wouldn't_!

The lieutenant noticed her change in posture, and hissed. "The stolen plans."

"Well, you _have_ been sleeping with the higher-ups, haven't you?" Anakin said, still almost conversational tone of voice, and now there was a datacard dancing in his left hand, flipping between his fingers. "The plans are intact, and there were no copies made of the disk. There wasn't time. I'll leave them on the floor over here, and you'll put the knife down and move away from her. How does that sound?"

"Hmm. Retrieving the plans, or killing a traitor and being instrumental in the capture of Anakin Skywalker – and then retrieving the plans after he's imprisoned. A dilemma."

"Not really. Because if you kill her – if you harm her at all – I will destroy you. _Before_ being captured. I promise you it wouldn't take much effort on my part."

Padmé wasn't sure what did it: the quiet promise in Anakin's voice, the look in his eyes, the drawn lightsabre. Whichever it was, the lieutenant hesitated for barely a minute before stretching his arm out at last. He held the vibroblade away from her throat but made no move to release his hold on her.

"The disk. Put it down and step away."

Anakin inclined his head mockingly and did as he was told, walking backwards away from the disk on the floor.

"Anakin -" Padmé objected, finally finding her voice, but the lieutenant gave her a shove forwards at the same time, so that she stumbled and nearly fell, catching herself just in time. She started walking towards her husband, determined not to look back, to flinch, to show weakness – not in front of the officer and not in front of Anakin, always fiercely proud of her strength. He held out a hand to her, and she clutched it, trembling.

"You sh-"

"Hush," he murmured gently.

Padmé could have cheerfully hit him for that one.

Still, she let herself be drawn along, step by step back towards Tarkin's shuttle, comforted by his nearness. There were shouts and hammering noises from the other side of the blast doors now; she could imagine them trying to hotwire the control mechanisms, cut through the doors.

The lieutenant, a sallow young man with an oddly hollow look, as if his very humanity had been carved out of him, was holding the datacard by now.

"You know, you're really too trusting," he said. "All I have to do – aarmf!"

Anakin had picked him up and thrown him against the wall by the blast doors with a gesture.

"We don't have long," he said. "Lucky I disabled that tractor beam before I came to get you – come on!"

Padmé hung back. "But the plans!"

"Curse the plans!" Anakin exploded. "Will you orphan Luke and Leia just days after they've finally got us back?"

_Damn_ him for knowing her so well. She snatched a handful of her filthy, irritatingly long skirt and yanked it up around her knees so she could run after him into the shuttle.

*********

"You shouldn't have done that."

"If you say so." Anakin didn't mean to be rude, exactly, but he had absolutely no intention of sitting in this damn cockpit and listening to his wife psycho-analyze his issues with losing people he loved and all the ways it was selfish of him to have given the Imps their plans back rather than see her hurt.

OK, maybe he did mean to be rude. Hopefully it would change the subject.

It didn't.

She threw a stylus at him; it bounced off his right arm.

"Hey!"

"Anakin, I'm your wife, not your semi-anonymous co-pilot. Get your communication skills back. Quickly."

"I didn't realise I had any," he muttered.

"It took me months to drill them into you," Padmé said sweetly.

He glared. She grinned.

"Really, though," she said, becoming serious again.

Anakin tightened his grip on the stick and set his jaw pugnaciously. "You can't ask me to sit back and let you die for the greater good, Padmé. Not then, not now, not ever."

"So what you're saying is, you'd do anything to save me, even if I don't want it."

Anakin met her eyes without flinching. "You knew I was screwed up when you married me."

Padmé gave a slightly bitter little laugh. "I suppose I did."

"And you still managed to love me."

"I still do. I always will."

He swallowed. "I sense a _but_."

"Love is unconditional acceptance, not unconditional agreement."

Anakin barked a laugh. "So what you're saying is, you would have let me die for the Rebellion and taken the plans back to the base."

Padmé closed her eyes. "I don't know," she admitted. "Anakin. You – you're everything I am."

"Likewise," he said. "But. Padmé. There was nothing on that disk."

Her eyes flew open. "What!"

"The datadisk," Anakin said patiently. "There was nothing on it. Well, nothing they could use – I had Artoo fill it up with some episodes of this holoshow that Leia watches – something about teenagers with magic living in the undercity of Coruscant, I don't know. She makes me watch it with her sometimes when she's ill."

Padmé was staring at him. "Oh," she said helplessly. "Oh, Gods, Anakin. I'm so – I'm such a -"

He shrugged. "Ten years ago, it wouldn't have been," he said honestly. And even now, the decision to hand over the disk had come to him easily, without hesitation: anything to protect her.

"We've been apart for a long time."

"Yes."

"Promise me – never again."

Anakin met her eyes across the hyperspace controls. "Not as long as there's breath in my body," he swore, and raised an eyebrow when Padmé shivered. "What? Are you cold?"

She glared at him. "You're not even doing it on purpose, are you? You really don't know. Your voice goes all – husky and fervent and it Does. Things."

"It _does things_," he repeated, teasing. "To you?"

"It had better not have been doing anything to anyone else," she snapped.

Anakin reached out and snapped on the autopilot without even looking at it. "What kind of things are we talking about, exactly?"

Padmé leaned over to him, close enough to kiss, her breath ghosting over his face, and turned the autopilot off again. "The kind of things that can wait till we have an actual bed in an actual room to do them in and no Imps trying to track us."

"You malicious tease. After the way you jumped me in that cell, too."

Her smile widened. "I love you too."

*********

"Tatooine?" Padmé said in surprise when they dropped out of hyperspace.

Anakin nodded, face turned away. "He knows I hate the place – it's one of the last places he'd look for me."

She wrapped her fingers around his wrist and gave it a gentle squeeze. "I'm so sorry, Ani."

He smiled. "First time you've called me that since I got you out of that cell."

"It is, isn't it? Well, I've had to put a lot of effort into thinking of you as 'that criminal Skywalker' over the last eleven years."

They abandoned Tarkin's shuttle in one of the canyons outside of Anchorhead, trusting in the Jawa to demolish it within a few days, and headed out.

Bad memories had been boiling up with every step Anakin had taken since leaving the shuttle, but there was a sense of homecoming here, too. After all, the desert never changed. It welcomed you back with open arms and glorious sunsets, offered you freedom and adventure and sights not meant for mortal man to see and then –

"Strange how a place can look so free and feel so trapped," he said suddenly.

Padmé took his hand, lacing their fingers together wordlessly.

The desert let them pass.

Their arrival on foot, and the rather ragged state of Padmé's dress, provoked a few curious looks, but no one bothered them. Out here, they were more likely to be victims of the Hutts than traitors to the Empire. The town was relatively small, half-sunk in the sand, an insignificant desert spaceport that barely saw three transports in a week in the docks.

But the Alliance had _some_ kind of contact or stash of sorts out here. Anakin left Padmé alone at a small cantina for maybe twenty minutes and returned with enough credits for a room for the night and passage to Ryloth in the morning, where they'd be picked up by one of his people.

"I think you know her," he said mischievously. "A certain former Padawan with a fondness for nicknames –"

"Ahsoka!" Padmé exclaimed, careful not to be too loud. "I had no idea she was with you!"

Anakin nodded. "As they've gotten older, a lot of the Padawans who escaped the Massacre at the Temple have sought us out," he said. "Quite a few of them have managed to hide some of the Younglings as well." He smiled faintly. "We're not much of an Order, but they get as much instruction as we can manage."

"Have many other Knights survived?"

"Not many, no. Most of the Generals in the field were killed instantly, or never made it off the planet they were on. But the lower levels of Coruscant swallow children easily. All they would have had to do was hide their lightsabres and chop off their braids."

And it had been Anakin himself who had told them to do that, Padmé remembered. He had fought Palpatine's troops in the halls of the Temple for as long as he could to give them time to run, his powers fuelled by desperation, rage, and his grief at Obi-Wan's death by the Chancellor's hand. Padmé was probably the only one who knew how close he had come to the Dark Side during that battle.

If she hadn't gone into labour when she did – if he hadn't sensed her pain from halfway across the galaxy...

She shook off her dark thoughts determinedly and smiled at him across the table, cheerful and reassuring as she could make it. They had a few days to be together before they arrived back at Anakin's base and were reunited with the twins, and as much as Padmé loved her children, time alone with her 'long-lost' husband was a precious gift.

They got a room in the only guesthouse in the town, a rambling old building with small windows, low ceilings and sandstone floor and walls. The room itself was tiny; there was barely enough space between the end of the large double bed and the chest of drawers against the opposite wall to squeeze through and reach the fresher.

Anakin was at the window, checking the street outside, tallying escape routes or whatever. Padmé didn't know and wasn't sure she cared. He would take care of it (and her). For now, that fresher was more important.

Hot water sluicing down her body washed the sand and sweat and dust away, wiped her skin clean of the metallic stink of Tarkin's Star Destroyer, the smell of blasters discharged. Padmé unbound her hair and washed it, watching the shampoo bubbles swirl into the drain with satisfaction. When she was done, she didn't just feel clean: she felt reborn. It was as if the secrets and lies of the last eleven years had run down the drain with the dirty water, leaving her free of the past and ready for the truth.

For the first time since Padmé Amidala had fallen in love with him, she was finally in a position to be openly married to Anakin Skywalker.

It was a delightful, heady, joyous feeling.

Smiling dreamily, Padmé pushed back the curtain to step out of the shower and stopped, finding herself facing her husband's broad, tanned chest. She blinked and looked up at him.

Anakin grinned at her mischievously and undid his belt; Padmé didn't so much back away as lean back, shaking her head firmly. "Oh, no," she said. "Ani, no, there's no room!"

The sentence ended on a shriek of laughter when he ducked into the shower with her and caught her in his arms. Warm skin, steady heartbeat under her palm, his right hand cool on her lower back while his left ran into her hair, and she traced lines through the sweat and grime covering his skin, fingers tripping over scars she knew and more she didn't, stretching up on tiptoe to reach his mouth.

Anakin was gazing at her the way he always had: intensely concentrated on everything about her, and just as they always had, that look and those blue eyes held her breathless and captivated and head over heels in love with him.

Padmé wanted, quite suddenly, to push him down onto the cool tiled floor and make love to him until they both passed out – wanted his hands on her hips and that fine smattering of chest hair scraping her nipples and the sharp little edge of pain when he bit at her neck – wanted him inside her, hot and hard and deep, wanted to fall apart around him and have to muffle her cries in his shoulder and feel him fall apart in turn, clutched safe in her arms, sweat-slick skin and ragged breathing.

They'd been apart so long, she had almost forgotten what this felt like: nakedness, vulnerability, want and need. How had she made it all the way to Anchorhead without tearing his clothes off? There had been that perfect opportunity in the shuttle earlier...

She was sure Anakin knew exactly what she was thinking. His eyes had gone near black with want and longing, and _there_ was that predatory little twist to his mouth. In some strange way, it was like re-reading a favourite book from long ago: everything the same, everything different.

"So we'll leave the curtain open," he said and switched the spray back on.

*********

"We're not going to have to share a room with the twins or anything, are we?" Padmé asked sleepily. "Because I don't think either of us have that kind of self-control."

Anakin's body shook underneath hers as he laughed. "No, Angel, don't worry. Sometimes things get a bit cramped, but that's usually just when we're on the move."

Padmé nodded as best she could without actually lifting her head off his chest. "I think I can live with that."

"The question is not whether you can live with that," Anakin said ruefully. "The question is whether you can live with me."

That did get her to raise her head. Late afternoon sunlight was slanting through the blinds on the little window. As luck had it, it was falling over Anakin's shoulders and face, striking gold glints in his hair and making him look more tanned than he actually was. He was squinting a little in the light, left arm behind his head; his right was wrapped around her waist.

"Because we've changed?"

"Because we've never done it before."

Padmé laughed. "Fair point," she said cheerfully. "We'll have to find a way to bribe the twins into being patient with us."

Anakin grimaced. "I warn you. It's not one of Leia's virtues."

"Or Luke's. Don't worry, we'll think of something."

"I shall be guided by you in this, Senator."

She pressed a quick kiss to his jaw. "Not anymore, Master Jedi."

Anakin drew his hand out from behind his head and pushed his fingers into her hair, cupping the back of her head. "Not anymore, Padmé."

"No, I forgot," Padmé agreed, grinning. "You're a terrorist, a criminal and a fugitive from justice, a traitor to the Empire and quite possibly a pirate as well."

Another thing she had forgotten: that he could move so quickly. One minute she was lying on top of him, legs tangled together, her hand drawing idle circles over his side, and then she was pinned beneath him, his weight on her an old, familiar comfort. Padmé laughed helplessly, pushing at his shoulders, but Anakin caught her wrists in his right hand and brought them to his mouth. "I only attack Imperial ships," he said, and this time she was sure he put that husky note in his voice deliberately.

He dipped his head and kissed her knuckles one by one, first her left hand, then her right, blue eyes never leaving her face, and when he was through she broke his grip and slid her hands into his hair, tangling her fingers in the shaggy, still-damp mess of curls.

"Doesn't change the fact that you're a pirate."

"A pirate with good intentions?"

"Good intentions," Padmé scoffed, trying to hold back something frighteningly like a giggle. It had been far too long since she'd last seen that faux-innocent little smile of his. She narrowed her eyes at him. "You'd make a perfect hero for a romance holonovel – the brave outlaw pirate fighting an evil Empire and rescuing damsels in distress –"

"Hey," Anakin interrupted, "there's only one damsel in this Empire I'm interested in _rescuing_." His hands were wandering suggestively; Padmé wriggled up the bed a little, tilting her hips and arching her back in invitation.

Jedi stamina. One of her _favourite_ things.

"I should hope so too," she said haughtily, and oh, he remembered how much she loved the feel of his fingertips sliding up the back of her thigh, tracing wide, irregular ovals across her skin, invisible markings: _mine, mine, yours, yours._

"Course, we're now also in a position to make millions selling the story of our star-crossed love... ow!" He burst out laughing when she hit him with the second pillow and grabbed it as he sat up. Padmé yanked at it indignantly, fully intending to hit him again if she could, but Anakin just tugged harder, overbalancing her and pulling her into his lap. She fell against his chest in a heap, laughing helplessly, and had to do a certain amount of semi-deliberate squirming to get upright, pressed close against his heat and his smooth skin. Every brush of her breasts against his chest sent a little shiver of pleasure and anticipation down her spine.

Anakin was biting down on his lower lip when she met his gaze again, breathing heavier than before. Padmé gave him a smug little smirk, but, "I love you," he said seriously. The light in his eyes wasn't laughter anymore.

Padmé wrapped her hand around his upper arm, her right one sliding around his ribs and up to curl over his shoulder from behind, and let herself lean back a little so she could look at him properly. Anakin's left arm was an iron bar at her back, supporting her – holding her close. Gods, she loved this: how strong he was, how much larger he was than she. How much power he held inside him, balanced on that thin line between good and evil, light and dark. Anakin was fire to her eyes, fierce and uncontrollable, raw, devastating energy.

She might be his anchor, but he was her strength.

She pressed a kiss to his chest, in the groove between his pectorals, tasting salty sweat – there was a scar there, just above her lips, a blaster, she thought, and ran her tongue around the uneven circle of slightly raised, burned flesh. Anakin gasped softly. Padmé, making a mental note of that spot's sensitivity, looked up at him. "I love you too," she said, and bent her head once more, trailing kisses up his chest and throat and along his shoulders, smoothing other scars away with lips and tongue, relearning the shape of him, the taste and texture of his skin.

Anakin slid his hand up her back, fingers stretching between her shoulder-blades, heavy and firm. Her lips at his pulse point made him groan and all of a sudden she felt him relax, sinking down slightly against the mattress, his shoulders going loose as if letting go of something: loneliness, fear for her, secrets and lies, as Padmé had let go of them in the shower earlier. Only his arms around her were still tense, holding her close with unspoken need.

She was only too happy to answer it.

By the time she reached his lips, the pillow they'd been fighting over had been pushed impatiently away and fallen to the ground unnoticed.


	4. Chapter 4

_this is a disclaimer._

**air and angels, chapter four (the end)**_  
_

Luke had been at the skystation for a week now, and he still got a flush of pure pleasure whenever he got to meet one of Leia's friends and inform them gravely that he was Luke Skywalker.

And he got to do that a lot. Leia knew everyone, and everyone knew Leia. Generals Rieekan and Dodonna and most of Dad's command staff called her "Commander Skywalker", and the techs in the hangar were more than happy to show her and Luke anything they wanted to see pertaining to computers, starfighter engines, disassembled blasters and broken commlinks. The mess hall was their playground and the fighter pilots were their babysitters, the kitchens a safe haven from punishment, the cargo boxes stacked in hangars and hallways their jungle gym.

(Threepio was often heard lamenting this inconsiderate behaviour at impressive decibels, calling it highly inappropriate for the children of Senator Padmé Amidala, but no one took much notice.)

Sabé was holed up with the Generals a lot, but they barely missed her: there was too much to do, too much to discover. Luke had never spent so much time in this state of unremitting excitement. Safe and hidden here on base, continually discovering new ways to amuse themselves, it was easy to almost forget about Mom and Dad and the trouble they might be in.

Almost.

They slept in Dad's bed rather than Leia's little cubbyhole until someone could organise a second mattress for Luke, and there was a holo of Mom on a ledge in the wall over the bed to watch over them, laughing and pregnant in a blue nightdress. Dad had everything from spare parts for droids to piles of holodisks and datapads stuffed in his room. Leia showed her brother the ones with the tech manuals and called the others "Jedi stuff" with a shrug and a secretive look.

That reminded him: he hadn't actually met any other Jedi yet.

Leia grinned at him. "Did you think we only had the one base?" she asked mysteriously, and that was all she'd say on the matter.

Luke stayed up for hours that night reading his way through Dad's datapads.

The next morning, he shook Leia awake long before their accustomed breakfast hour.

"Whaaaaa?" she grumbled, waving a hand at him in a sleepy and pathetic attempt at a punch in the arm.

"Leia, I wanna learn to be a Jedi, like Dad," Luke announced.

Leia sat up, staring. "Well, duh," she said, and then made Luke's pillow levitate off the bed and drop into his lap.

Luke looked aghast. "You never told me you could do that!"

Leia shrugged guiltily. "Dad told me not to even talk about it off base," she admitted. "And then I kinda forgot all about it. What with, you know, Mom. And stuff."

"I'm your brother!" Luke said indignantly. "You don't just forget to tell me things! Show me how you did that!"

Leia patted the bed beside her. "It took me ages to learn to do it properly," she warned.

"_Show_ me," Luke insisted.

They forgot about breakfast. And getting dressed. And, in fact, just about anything else. Leia talked and talked, everything Dad had told her over the years, everything she had overheard, everything people like Ahsoka, Barriss and Galen had said. Luke listened, legs crossed, breathing even, and tried to concentrate the way she described it, to feel the Force flowing through him, to reach out with his emotions and his instinct.

It was krething hard work.

"Sometimes, I know something's going to happen before it happens." He didn't open his eyes. "A mug getting knocked over. 3PO tripping over a pair of boots on the floor. I'm a perfect shot with a blaster. And I – I look at a speeder, and I _know_ how it works. What to do. What it can do. It's the same with computers. They're just... easy."

"That's the Force," Leia said quietly. "When I saw the ship at Mom's house – you know, that sithspawn Tarkin – I knew he was evil."

Luke opened his eyes and looked straight at her. "The minute you walked into the classroom at school, I wanted to know you," he said. "You felt like my best friend before we'd even met."

She giggled. "And then we did meet, and I hated you."

"But you trusted me too. To help you repair that console during detention."

"Yeah."

"That's nuts, really."

"We're Skywalkers. Whaddaya expect?"

"I always thought families were supposed to be perfect."

"Shows how much you know."

"Things are going to be OK now, aren't they? Dad will bring Mom back."

Leia stretched out both hands to him. Luke held on tight.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, little brother, Dad will bring her back. And then you'll be a Jedi and so will I, and we'll defeat the Imps and bring down the Emperor and make everything better for everyone in the galaxy."

"And live happily ever after?" Luke asked, slightly sarcastic.

"That's the plan, you nerfherder."

Luke frowned a bit. "I don't know," he said. "Are Jedi allowed to live happily ever after?"

Leia stared at him. "I don't see why not," she declared.

"I meant I thought Jedi are always going from one adventure to the next."

"There's not an endless supply of adventures in the universe," Dad said. "Sometimes whole years go by that are just _boring_."

Leia jumped so hard she hit her head on the ledge; Luke almost fell off the bed scrambling around to face his Dad, the covers tangling around his legs.

Anakin was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, smiling wide and bright. He looked exhausted, and his clothes were rumpled, but Leia didn't think... no, Leia knew she'd never seen him look so happy.

"Someone's here to see you two," Dad said and moved aside.

It was Mom.

*********

"Here you go," Anakin said, helping Luke put the helmet on.

"But I can't see a thing!" Luke protested, waving the training lightsabre from side to side ineffectively.

Anakin jumped back from it, laughing. "You're not supposed to see, Luke. Try _feeling_ instead."

Luke glared at the inside of the visor. "OK then. Let's go."

There was a _snap-whirr_ of the remote turning on, and Luke drew a breath. Slow, easy. Feel the Force – concentrate. Know what was happening, don't see it.

Then –

Deflecting three blaster shots in quick succession was awesome enough, but feeling Dad's pride through the Force was even better.

Luke ripped the helmet off and whooped in triumph. "Leia, did you _see_ that?"

"Well done, little brother," Leia said. "I've been doing that since we were _seven_."

"Who in Kessel told you you were older than me?" Luke demanded.

"Oh, Luke, language," Mom said primly from the sidelines.

Dad just kept laughing.


End file.
